The  Relation  of  Inf erence 
to  Fact  in  MilVs  Logic 


(By  , 

],  FORSYTH  CRA  WFORD 


PHILOSOPHIC  STUDIES 

ISSUED  UNDER  THE  DIRECTION  OF  THE  DEPARTMENT  OF 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO 

NUMBER  5 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO.  ILLINOIS 


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KARL  W.  HIERSEMANN,  Leipzig 
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i 


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THE  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT 

IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/relationsofinferOOcraw_0 


THE  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO 
FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


FORSYTH  CRAWFORD 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
CHICAGO,  ILLINOIS 


Copyright  igi6  By 
The  University  op  Chicago 

All  Rights  Reserved 
Published  April  iqi6 


Composed  and  Printed  By 
The  University  of  Chicago  Press 
Chicago.  Illinois,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

PAGE 

I. 

Subjective  Facts  as  Data  . 

. 

7 

II. 

The  World  of  Objective  Facts 

. 

.  i6 

III. 

The  Universality  of  Attributes  and 

Propositions  . 

22 

IV. 

Inference  as  Anticipation  of  Facts 

. 

•  27 

V. 

Inference  as  Proof  of  Propositions 

. 

•  34 

VI. 

Inference  as  Discovery 

•  43 

5 


CHAPTER  I 

SUBJECTIVE  FACTS  AS  DATA 

The  problems  of  logic  are  coming  to  form  the  center  of  interest  in 
philosophical  discussion.  Most  present  controversies  in  the  field  of 
philosophy  turn  upon  some  diflference  which  is  fundamentally  logical. 
There  is  need,  therefore,  to  re-examine  and  clarify  the  underlying  con¬ 
ceptions  of  logic.  Any  one  of  the  great  historical  systems  of  logic  offers 
a  species  of  laboratory  example  of  the  shaping  of  logical  concepts  under 
some  specific  point  of  view,  and  the  difficulties  which  it  leaves  unresolved 
offer  valuable  experimental  material  for  further  logical  construction.  It 
is  with  such  a  purpose  that  this  paper  undertakes  an  analysis  of  the 
relation  of  inference  to  fact  in  Mill’s  logical  system. 

In  constructing  a  theory  of  inference  Mill’s  problem  was  to  reconcile 
the  associationism  of  the  English  empirical  school  with  the  procedure  of 
modern  physical  science.  He  occupies  alternately  the  subjective  point 
of  view  of  the  one  position  and  the  objective  point  of  view  of  the  other. 
This  oscillation  of  position  comes  out  strikingly  in  the  varied  status 
which  he  gives  to  facts,  which  are  at  one  time  the  ultimate  constituents 
of  consciousness  and  at  another  time  the  things  and  events  of  an  inde¬ 
pendent  world.  When  stating  the  relation  of  inference  to  its  data  and 
thus  assigning  it  a  locus,  he  takes  the  subjective  point  of  view.  When 
analyzing  the  nature  of  inference  and  basing  its  validity,  he  takes  the 
objective  point  of  view.  It  will  be  well,  then,  at  the  outset,  to  examine 
his  conception  of  both  subjective  and  objective  facts,  and  the  transition 
which  he  seeks  to  effect  from  the  one  to  the  other.  Over  against  both 
of  these,  facts  in  the  mind  and  facts  in  nature.  Mill  naively  utilizes  a 
system  of  meanings  which  he  never  thinks  of  as  sundered  from  the  facts, 
yet  which  are  assumed  as  logically  independent  in  his  inferential  process. 
An  examination  of  the  system  of  meanings  we  shall  postpone  till  after 
we  have  examined  his  assumption  of  facts,  and  will  consider  the  latter 
apart  from  their  meaning  so  far  as  that  can  be  done  without  distortion. 

The  locus  of  inference  in  relation  to  fact,  as  assigned  by  Mill,  rests 
on  the  distinction  between  immediate  and  mediate  knowledge.  The 
first  is  self-evident,  the  second  reasoned.  We  obtain  the  first  by  intui¬ 
tion,  the  second  by  inference.  “Truths  are  known  to  us  in  two  ways: 
some  are  known  directly,  and  of  themselves;  some  through  the  medium 


7 


8 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


of  other  truths.  The  former  are  the  subject  of  Intuition;  ....  the 
latter,  of  Inference.” ^  They  are  ‘‘  truths  known  to  us  by  immediate  con¬ 
sciousness  ”  and  conclusions  which  can  be  drawn  from  these. Of  these 
two  classes  of  truths,  the  first  does  not  require  proof;  such  a  truth  carries 
its  own  evidence — “that  is,  is  without  evidence  in  the  proper  sense  of 
the  word.”^  It  must  therefore  be  “known  beyond  possibility  of  ques¬ 
tion. ”4  One  cannot  but  be  certain  of  it.  But  only  a  small  part  of  our 
knowledge  has  intuitive  character.^  By  far  the  larger  portion  hangs 
suspended  from  these  immediate  truths  by  a  series  of  proofs. 

This  apportionment  of  knowledge  appears  on  the  face  of  it  very  clear 
and  definite.  At  any  rate  it  seems  to  offer  a  hopeful  program :  to  begin 
with  perfectly  certain  data  and  to  let  each  step  from  those  data  be  one 
of  strict  proof.  Upon  examination,  however,  the  simplicity  of  the  matter 
disappears.  Like  the  gratuitous  advice  to  “be  sure  you  are  right,  then 
go  ahead,”  this  program  does  not  tell  us  how  to  know  when  we  are  right. 
This  conception  of  primitive  and  unquestionable  data,  indeed,  is  thor¬ 
oughly  ambiguous.  While  he  does  not  uncover  its  source.  Mill  has  to 
acknowledge  this  ambiguity  in  two  respects: 

First,  Mill  admits  that  there  is  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  kind 
of  data  from  which  we  start.  He  sets  in  sharp  contrast  two  theories  on 
this  point:  the  “ontological”  theory  of  the  Scotch  school,  and  the 
empirical  theory  of  his  own  English  predecessors,  which  he  defends.^ 
The  former  holds  that,  in  addition  to  the  data  admitted  by  the  latter 
school,  the  mind  is  so  constituted  as  to  know  intuitively  the  existence  and 
laws  of  operation  of  certain  objects  external  to  the  mind,  while  the  latter 
recognizes  “no  ultimate  premises  but  the  facts  of  our  subjective  con¬ 
sciousness;  our  sensations,  emotions,  intellectual  states  of  mind,  and 
volitions.”  Mill  considers  all  thinkers  to  be  agreed  that  there  are  some 
such  primitive  data,  but  to  disagree  as  to  whether  or  not  such  data  are 
exclusively  subjective.  But  surely  the  very  possibility  of  dispute  as  to 
the  character  of  what  are  to  be  considered  primitive  data  is  a  very 
serious  obstacle  to  the  theory  that  there  are  any  data  at  all  to  be  taken 
as  unambiguously  primitive. 

There  is  a  second  ambiguity  of  more  serious  character,  not  so  expli¬ 
citly  recognized,  though  virtually  acknowledged  by  Mill.  While  it 

^  Mill,  Logic,  8th  ed.,  Harper,  igd.  References  to  the  Logic  are  hereafter  by  page 
numbers,  without  repeating  the  title.  To  make  references  to  the  Logic  more  definite, 
letters  are  added  to  designate  in  order  each  paragraph  or  part  of  paragraph  on  a  page. 

2  ige-ioa;  Mill,  Examination  of  Hamilton,  137. 

3  21b.  4  20c.  s  21c.  ^  520&. 


SUBJECTIVE  FACTS  AS  DATA 


9 


seems  clear  to  him  that  consciousness  immediately  reveals  the  primitive 
data  of  our  knowledge,  which  consist  of  our  own  subjective  states,  Mill 
finds  it  impossible  in  practice  to  determine  what  those  data  are.  Assum¬ 
ing  agreement  as  to  their  subjective  character,  their  actual  discovery  in 
detail  proves  impossible.  Supposed  to  be  known  “beyond  the  possi¬ 
bility  of  question,”  they  are  in  fact  unrecognizable,  because  they  cannot 
be  distinguished  from  the  inferences  that  are  drawn  from  them.  “We 
may  fancy  that  we  see  or  feel  what  we  in  reality  infer.  A  truth,  or  a 
supposed  truth,  which  is  really  the  result  of  a  very  rapid  inference,  may 
seem  to  be  apprehended  intuitively.”^  Observation,  which  is  another 
name  for  intuition,  is  constantly  vitiated  by  confusion  with  inference. 
“Observation  and  inference  are  intimately  blended.”^  Now  if  we  ever 
mistake  inference  for  observation,  it  surely  follows  that  we  can  never  be 
sure  we  have  not  done  so.  There  is  no  safe  criterion  by  which  to  dis¬ 
tinguish  the  two;  for  the  apparent  self-evidence  of  immediate  intuition, 
our  only  resource  in  the  case,  is  admitted  to  be  liable  to  fail.  It  is  idle 
to  urge  “a  correct  discrimination  between  that,  in  a  result  of  observa¬ 
tion,  which  has  really  been  perceived,  and  that  which  is  an  inference  from 
the  perception,”^  for  the  supposed  purity  of  the  observation  may  still  be 
only  our  “fancy.”  “From  my  senses,”  Mill  claims,  “I  have  only  the 
sensations,  and  those  are  genuine.”4  No  doubt  they  would  be  genuine 
if  I  could  be  sure  that  they  are  truly  mere  sensations.  “  Errors  of  sense,” 
he  says  again,  “are  erroneous  inferences  from  sense;  ....  the  decep¬ 
tion  ....  is  in  my  judgment. ”s  But  since  such  errors  are  always 
possible,  how  can  I  know  that  there  are  no  further  errors  of  judgment 
lurking  in  what  I  fancy  to  be  perception  ? 

Evidently  this  distinction  between  intuition  and  inference  proves 
unworkable,  and  breaks  down  for  lack  of  a  criterion  of  discrimination 
between  the  two.  If  we  press  the  difficulty  farther  to  discover  its  precise 
nature,  we  find  it  involved  in  Mill’s  theory  of  consciousness,  or  of  expe¬ 
rience,  as  consisting  of  given  mental, states.  An  experience  of  that  kind 
would  properly  leave  no  room  for  inference;  and  in  grafting  inference 
upon  it  Mill  introduces  an  alien  element  in  contradiction  with  his 
premises.  This  point  will  repay  closer  examination. 

^  2od.  Cf.  Mill,  Berkeley,  278. 

2  4506.  So  Mill  contrasts  “experience”  with  “a  mistaken  supposition  of  experi¬ 
ence”  (I9S^/),  or  with  “a  superficial  semblance  of  experience”  (igbu). 

3  45I(;.  “We  ought  to  know  what  part  of  the  assertion  rests  on  consciousness, 
and  is  therefore  indisputable,  what  part  on  inference,  and  is  therefore  questionable” 

(S45<^)- 

4451a. 


S45od. 


lo  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 

Mill  professes  himself  an  adherent  of  Berkeleyan  idealism,  which  he 
received  from  his  father  in  the  form  of  an  elaborated  associational  psy¬ 
chology.  To  this  school  of  thinkers  it  seems  axiomatic  that  only  our 
own  mental  states  are  immediately  known  to  us.  It  inevitably  follows 
that  consciousness  is  shut  up  to  its  own  subjective  contents,  and  that 
the  knowledge  of  anything  else,  if  the  possibility  of  such  knowledge  be 
granted,  must  be  capable  of  translation  into  terms  of  mental  states. 

The  primary  interest  of  this  school,  both  historically  and  construct¬ 
ively,  is  directed  upon  the  analysis  of  the  knowledge  of  an  external 
world  into  constituents  of  sensation.  So  strong  is  this  interest  in  sen¬ 
sation,  an  interest  which  has  rightly  earned  for  the  school  the  designation 
of  sensationalist,  that  one  would  almost  suppose  consciousness  to  be 
composed  solely  of  a  kaleidoscopic  succession  of  sensations.  Sensations, 
in  their  temporal  and  spatial  discreteness,  their  qualitative  resemblances, 
and  their  associational  connections,  are  at  any  rate  taken  as  the  type 
of  mental  facts.  And  it  is  this  sensationalism  on  which  Mill  rests  when 
he  lays  down  the  distinction  between  intuition  and  inference. 

Yet  sensations  are  not  the  only  contents  of  the  mind  acknowledged 
by  Mill.  With  reference  to  the  other  contents  of  the  mind  there  are  two 
conflicting  tendencies:  either,  on  the  one  hand,  to  reduce  them  all  to 
mere  given  mental  states  of  the  same  immediacy  as  sensation,  in  which 
case  there  is  no  opening  for  inferences  to  slip  between  them;  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  lift  them  to  the  level  of  various  operations  performed  upon 
and  with  sensation,  in  which  case  inference  finds  a  work  to  do  but 
immediacy  is  gone. 

There  are  several  of  these  other  classes  of  mental  states  recognized 
by  Mill,  and  one  or  two  factors  that  he  does  not  think  of  classing  as 
mental  states,  but  which,  if  not  so  classified,  do  not  fit  into  his  original 
theory  of  consciousness.  Beside  sensations,  he  classes  as  mental  states 
images,  emotions,  volitions,  and  thoughts.  Relations  he  hesitates  about 
so  classing.  Meanings  he  does  not  class  here,  and  on  this  side  of  his 
system  they  are  simply  an  outstanding  factor.  Some  of  these  non- 
sensational  mental  facts  require  examination. 

What  we  now  call  mental  images  constitute  the  simplest  of  the  non- 
sensational  mental  states  recognized  by  Mill.  Mill  usually  calls  them 
“ideas,”  as  against  sensations,  which  he  also  calls  “impressions,”  after 
Hume.^  “Whenever  any  state  of  consciousness  has  once  been  excited 
in  us,  no  matter  by  what  cause,  an  inferior  degree  of  the  same  state  of 
consciousness,  a  state  of  consciousness  resembling  the  former,  but 

^  But  of  course  he  has  other  uses  of  the  term  “idea.” 


SUBJECTIVE  FACTS  AS  DATA 


II 


inferior  in  intensity,  is  capable  of  being  reproduced  in  us  without  the 

presence  of  any  such  cause  as  excited  it  at  first . This  law  is 

expressed  by  saying,  in  the  language  of  Hume,  that  every  mental  impres¬ 
sion  has  its  idea.”^  “These  ideas,  or  secondary  mental  states,  are 
excited  by  our  impressions,  or  by  other  ideas,  according  to  certain  laws 
which  are  called  Laws  of  Association.”^  Here  one  might  be  tempted  to 
see  between  primary  and  “secondary  mental  states”  a  distinction  cor¬ 
responding  to  that  between  intuition  and  inference,  or  immediate  and 
mediate.  But  such  a  comparison  would  be  entirely  misleading.  Impres¬ 
sions  and  ideas  stand  for  Mill  upon  exactly  the  same  level  of  immediacy. 
The  distinction  which  he  makes  between  them  on  the  ground  of  the 
presence  or  absence  of  a  stimulating  object^  is  from  this  point  of  view 
illegitimate,  for  it  is  not  based  on  a  difference  in  their  actual  analyzable 
content,  but  is  itself  an  inference  we  draw  from  their  organized  relations. 
Again,  the  laws  of  association  by  which  these  secondary  states  are  aroused 
by  no  means  coincide  with  the  inferential  laws  by  which  we  pass  from 
facts  directly  known  to  facts  known  through  proof.  The  confusion  of 
inference  and  association  which  sometimes  does  arise  Mill  expressly 
brands  as  a  serious  logical  fallacy.^  Sensations  and  images,  in  short,  are 
on  the  same  level  of  immediacy,  both  directly  given  in  consciousness. 
They  are  both  mental  fact.  From  this  point  of  view  we  should  have 
no  right  to  treat  memory  and  expectation  as  in  any  sense  a  means  of 
rising  inferentially  above  the  immediate  data  of  consciousness. 

The  other  mental  states  which  must  be  included  in  the  immediate 
content  of  consciousness  Mill  classifies  as  thoughts,  emotions,  and 
volitions.  These  are  taken  exactly  in  the  same  way  as  sensation,  all 
equally  immediate.  Emotions  and  volitions^  we  may  for  our  present 
purpose  lay  aside.  But  the  mental  states  which  he  calls  thoughts  have 
grave  significance  for  a  theory  of  inference. 

It  is  certainly  disconcerting  to  find  the  class  of  “thoughts”  included 
as  a  member  of  this  list.  Where  is  inference  to  come  in  if  it  is  not 
thought?  But  thoughts  too  are  taken  as  mere  mental  facts.  “Under 
the  word  Thought  is  here  to  be  included  whatever  we  are  internally 
conscious  of  when  we  are  said  to  think.”^  These  “intellectual  states  of 

^  59I^^.  "  592^^.  ^  59^d- 

4  521-23,  and  elsewhere. 

s  A  volition  indeed  is  made  up  of  two  things:  a  physical  effect,  preceded  by  a 
“state  of  mind”;  the  latter  is  the  “intention  to  produce  the  effect,”  and  that  belongs 
to  the  content  of  consciousness  (516). 


12 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


mind”  are  just  as  primitive  and  immediate  facts  as  sensations,  for  Mill 
“recognizes  no  ultimate  premises  but  the,  facts  of  our  subjective  conscious- ' 
ness:  our  sensations,  emotions,  intellectual  states  of  mind,  and  volitions.”^ 
We  are  here  confronted  with  a  curious  and  most  significant  difficulty, 
which  brings  into  question  the  whole  doctrine  of  immediacy  in  Mill’s 
sense.  For  certainly  inferences,  knowledge  obtained  by  reasoning,  not 
only  what  we  see  and  feel  but  what  we  “  fancy  that  we  see  or  feel,”  are 
all  in  some  sense  “intellectual  states  of  mind”;  they  are  part  of  what 
“we  are  internally  conscious  of  when  we  are  said  to  think.”  Yet  this 
thinking,  which  is  surely  to  be  set  in  contrast  with  the  data  of  inference 
as  the  very  process  of  inference  if  there  is  such  a  thing  as  inference  at  all, 
is  in  turn  swept  back  into  the  contents  of  consciousness,  all  of  which  are 
immediately  given  as  the  data  of  inference.  The  immediacy  of  all  mental 
states  and  the  genuineness  of  inference  are  thus  in  flat  contradiction. 

In  the  next  place,  how  does  Mill  treat  relations?  Between  facts  of 
nature,  taken  in  the  objective  sense  that  will  come  before  us  below.  Mill 
recognizes  the  possibility  of  all  sorts  of  relations;  but  these  are  all 
reducible  to  the  subjective  relations  of  coexistence,  succession,  and 
resemblance  between  mental  states,  and  it  is  the  latter  that  concern  us 
here.  Here  we  meet  with  the  same  ambiguity.  Mill  wavers  between  two 
positions.  For  these  relations  between  objective  facts  are  reduced  sub¬ 
jectively  either  to  relations  between  states  of  consciousness  or  to  states 
of  consciousness  themselves.  On  the  one  hand,  “those  relations,  when 
considered  as  subsisting  between  other  things,  exist  in  reality  only 
between  ....  states  of  consciousness”;^  on  the  other  hand,  “there  is 
no  part  of  what  the  names  expressive  of  the  objective  relation  imply 
that  is  not  resolvable  into  states  of  consciousness.”^  The  peculiar  sig¬ 
nificance  of  this  ambiguity  lies  here,  that  only  when  these  relations  are 
taken  as  themselves  states  of  consciousness  can  they  be  treated  con¬ 
sistently  with  Mill’s  general  theory  of  the  subjective  immediacy  of  con¬ 
sciousness;  while  only  as  they  are  treated  as  somehow  different  from 
states  of  consciousness,  added  to  them,  as  it  were,  or  involving  reorgani¬ 
zation  of  them,  is  there  room  for  a  process  of  inference  that,  while  resting 
on  immediate  intuition,  shall  build  upon  it  a  structure  of  mediated 
knowledge.  The  ambiguity  is  indispensable  to  the  seeming  clearness 
of  the  original  distinction  between  intuition  and  inference.  So  we  find 
Mill  asserting  on  the  one  side  that  “resemblance  is  nothing  but  our 
feeling  of  resemblance;  succession  is  nothing  but  our  feeling  of  succes- 

^  520&  (italics  mine). 

2  65^  (italics  mine) . 


3  Gob  (italics  mine). 


SUBJECTIVE  FACTS  AS  DATA 


13 


sion’'^;  and  on  the  other  side  that  “our  consciousness  of  the  succession 
of  these  sensations  is  not  a  third  sensation  or  feeling  added  to  them,”^ 
Mill  simply  assumes  that,  because  “to  have  two  feelings  at  all  implies 
having  them  either  successively  or  else  simultaneously,’’  therefore  suc¬ 
cessive  sensations  are  somehow  a  sensation  of  succession;  and  so  with 
the  other  relations.  How  this  can  be  is  well  acknowledged  to  be  a 
mystery.  “These  feelings  of  resemblance  and  ....  dissimilarity  are 
parts  of  our  nature;  ....  states  of  consciousness  which  are  peculiar, 
unresolvable,  and  inexplicable. ”3  They  are  “either  ....  states  of 
feeling,  or  something  inextricably  involved  therein. ’’^ 

The  final  breakdown  of  this  doctrine  of  immediacy  of  consciousness 
is  disclosed  when  a  system  of  meanings  is  set  up  over  against  the  merely 
passing,  given  facts.  But  it  will  be  convenient  to  postpone  a  discussion 
of  Mill’s  system  of  meanings  till  after  we  have  examined  his  attempt  to 
build  objective  out  of  subjective  facts.  We  may  then  be  able  to  trace 
more  clearly  the  root  of  Mill’s  difficulty.  But  it  is  already  evident  that 
there  is  a  confusion  in  Mill’s  conception  of  given  mental  facts.  Indeed, 
it  appears  to  involve  three  distinct  errors,  perhaps  all  cardinal  errors  of 
the  associational  school: 

First,  all  analyzed  content  of  experience  is  made  subjective.  The 
unavowed  motive  for  this  is  probably  as  follows:  The  strain  of  attention 
required  to  analyze  any  content  of  experience,  and  the  temporary  uncer¬ 
tainty  as  to  the  outcome  of  the  analysis,  are  used  as  indications  that  the 
content  when  so  analyzed  is  subjective.^  The  effort,  for  example,  to 
distinguish  the  baffling  shades  of  green  seen  upon  a  meadow,  or  the  evan¬ 
escent  chirps  and  hums  heard  in  the  same  meadow,  acts  as  a  motive  to 
refer  back  to  subjective  consciousness  the  colors  and  sounds  when  they 
are  discriminated.  In  this  way  all  phenomena  when  analyzed  tend  to 
become  psychological,  and  experience  is  taken  as  composed  of  mental 
states. 

Secondly,  these  subjective  products  of  analysis  are  then  regarded  as 
genetically  prior  to  the  analysis  which  brought  them  to  consciousness. 
Because  they  are  now  found  there,  it  is  supposed  that  they  must  pre¬ 
viously  have  been  there. ^  An  experience  which  analytic  attention  has 
succeeded  in  differentiating  into  elements  is  taken  as  having  been  pre¬ 
viously  constructed  by  an  association  of  similar  elements.  So  the  course 

1636.  ^6oc.  ^6ia.  ‘^6sb. 

5  Mead,  “The  Definition  of  the  Psychical,”  University  of  Chicago  Decennial 
Publications ,  First  Series,  III,  23-38. 

6  Royce,  Outlines  of  Psychology,  97-117,  has  an  excellent  discussion  of  this  fallacy. 


14 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL'S  LOGIC 


of  experience  becomes  an  agglomeration  of  original,  subjective,  internally 
fixed  units.  This  is  sensationalism  combined  with  associationism. 

Thirdly,  a  succession  of  logically  independent  units  is  expected  to 
constitute  a  single  experience.  Mental  states  as  mere  facts  are  wholly 
evanescent,  and  are  never  repeated.  How  then  can  there  be  any  accu¬ 
mulation  in  the  series  ?  At  times  Mill  is  fully  aware  of  the  difficulty,  and 
acknowledges  as  inexplicable  the  power  possessed  by  the  series  of  mental 
states  of  knowing  itself  as  a  series.^  But  this  inexplicability  never  drives 
him  back  to  a  reconsideration  of  his  first  assumption.  Leaving  the 
mental  facts  in  their  bare  givenness  and  independence,  he  naively  adds 
to  them  an  ‘‘impulse  of  the  generalizing  propensity.”^  Now  Mill  is  of 
course  right  in  regarding  generalization  as  most  significant  for  the  theory 
of  inference.  The  whole  possibility  of  inference  to  reach  after  and  before 
rests  on  generalization.  But  the  propensity  to  generalize  is  a  somewhat 
startling  addition  to  the  scheme  of  simply  associated  mental  states.  Is 
it  not  in  fact  a  contradiction  ?  Given  a  succession  of  barely  presented 
mental  contents,  one  can  suppose  an  addition  of  more  such  contents  and 
more  varied  contents.  But  how  could  generalization  get  any  foothold 
among  them?  What  could  generalization  possibly  mean  in  terms  of 
such  contents,  even  including  immediate  feelings  of  resemblance  ?  The 
truth  is  that  Mill  has  assumed,  side  by  side  with  his  system  of  mental 
states,  a  system  of  universal  meanings.  Were  it  not  for  these,  inference 
could  be  only  the  piling  up  of  more  intuitions.  With  them,  inference 
finds  expression  in  significant  propositions.  The  mysterious  propensity 
of  the  mind  to  generalize  is  simply  the  illicit  acknowledgment,  whenever 
they  are  needed,  of  a  system  of  meanings  which  connect  the  bare,  passing 
facts  of  consciousness  and  elevate  them  into  an  organic  experience. 

To  recapitulate.  Mill  starts  with  a  sharp  distinction  between  imme¬ 
diate  intuition  and  mediate  inference.  The  distinction,  however,  breaks 
down,  because  if  the  given  facts  of  consciousness  are  made  to  include  all 
the  contents  of  experience  there  is  no  room  for  inference,  while  if  we 
allow  an  element  of  inference  in  some  of  the  facts  of  consciousness  any 
facts  may  be  equally  infected  and  no  data  are  left  whose  immediacy  can 
be  guaranteed.  Mill  escapes  the  pressure  of  the  difficulty  only  because 
his  treatment  of  inference  is  disrupted  into  two  parts:  On  the  subjective 
level  he  assigns  the  locus  of  inference  by  asserting  its  distinction  from 
intuition;  but  he  does  not  on  this  level  discuss  the  method  of  inference, 
and  so  escapes  the  need  of  a  criterion  of  its  distinction  from  intuition. 

^  Mill,  Examination  of  Hamilton,  I,  260-62. 

2  154^,  227a,  h. 


SUBJECTIVE  FACTS  AS  DATA 


IS 


On  the  objective  level  he  elaborates  a  method  of  inference,  but  the  imme¬ 
diate  data  upon  which  the  method  must  operate  he  assumes  as  already 
provided  on  the  subjective  level.  On  the  one  level  everything  is  datal, 
with  no  room  for  inference;  on  the  other,  there  is  a  method  of  inference 
but  no  starting-point  for  its  operation.  This  last  assertion  can  receive 
its  justification,  however,  only  after  an  examination  of  Mill’s  treatment 
of  objective  facts,  to  which  we  may  now  turn. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  WORLD  OF  OBJECTIVE  FACTS 

The  world  of  facts  with  which  MilFs  inferential  process  actually  deals 
is  a  thoroughly  objective  world,  conceived  in  terms  of  pure  naturalism; 
not  at  all  the  world  of  subjective  mental  facts  which  he  first  assumed. 
When  Mill  is  expounding  its  method  it  is  these  objective  facts  upon 
which  inference  is  made  to  rest. 

How  does  Mill  reach  this  world  of  objective  facts?  Ostensibly  he 
gets  it  by  a  process  of  complication  of  the  associative  connections  of 
mental  states.  The  complications  become  so  involved  that  the  original 
mental  states  drop  out  of  sight  and  the  complications  alone  remain,  to 
form  an  objective  world  of  things  and  events.  It  would  be  aside  from 
our  purpose  to  criticize  this  transition  in  detail,  but  we  may  note  three 
fundamental  characters  of  the  objective  world  thus  reached  by  Mill.  A 
statement  of  these  will  m^ake  clearer  the  nature  of  the  shift  from  a  sub¬ 
jective  to  an  objective  level.  It  will  then  also  be  observed  that  they 
correspond  closely  to  the  three  ‘‘analogies’’  of  Kant. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  a  world  of  things,  existing  permanently  and 
independent  of  individual  consciousness.  The  transition  to  this  concep¬ 
tion  from  that  of  mental  states  is  effected  by  means  of  the  conception  of 
permanent  potentialities  of  sensation.^  On  the  Berkeleyan  level,  where 
experience  of  objects  is  interpreted  in  psychological  terms,  sensible  things 
are  sensations,  and  the  existence  of  sensible  things  means  their  perception 
by  the  mind.  Nature  is  but  the  aggregate  of  sensible  ideas,  and  the 
uniformity  of  nature  is  a  uniformity  in  the  order  of  sensations.  Now 
Mill,  as  we  have  seen,  starts  on  this  level;  but  by  means  of  complicating 
associations  he  rises  to  an  objective  level,  on  which  the  permanent  poten¬ 
tialities  of  sensation  serve  as  a  core  around  which  phenomena  are  organ¬ 
ized.^  Substance  is  thus  conceived  as  a  fixed  group  or  set  of  potentialities 
of  sensation  joined  together  according  to  a  fixed  law.  These  are  not 
“mere  vague  possibilities,”  but  “conditional  certainties. ’’^  They  are 

^  This  transition  is  briefly  described  in  the  LogiCy  53-54.  The  classical  passage 
in  which  it  is  elaborated  is  in  Examination  of  Hamilton,  chap.  xi.  In  both  these  works 
Mill  uses  the  term  “possibilities  of  sensation.”  In  his  later  Essay  on  Berkeley  he  uses 
the  more  appropriate  term  “potentialities.” 

2  Logic,  45 1&,  456c,  425&-26a.  3  Mill,  Hamilton,  238. 

16 


THE  WORLD  OF  OBJECTIVE  FACTS 


17 


considered  objective  because  of  their  permanence,  their  reliability,  and 
their  social  community.  First,  they  are  permanent.  “The  conception 
I  form  of  the  world  ....  comprises,  along  with  the  sensations  I  am 

feeling,  a  countless  variety  of  possibilities  of  sensation . These 

various  possibilities  are  the  important  thing  to  me  in  the  world.  My 
present  sensations  are  generally  of  little  importance,  and  are,  moreover, 
fugitive;  the  possibilities,  on  the  contrary,  are  permanent,  which  is  the 
character  that  mainly  distinguishes  our  idea  of  Substance  from  our 
notion  of  sensation.”^  The  object  is  “invested  with  the  quality  of  per¬ 
manence,  in  contrast  ....  with  the  temporary  character  of  each  of  the 
sensations  composing  the  group it  “presents  itself  to  the  mind  .  .  .  . 
as  a  kind  of  permanent  substratum,  under  a  set  of  passing  experiences  or 
manifestations.”  “The  whole  set  of  sensations  as  possible,  form  a  per¬ 
manent  background  to  any  one  or  more  of  them  that  are,  at  a  given 
moment,  actual. Secondly,  they  are  reliable  even  when  they  pass  out¬ 
side  the  individual’s  experience.'^  “The  reliance  of  mankind  on  the  real 
existence  of  ...  .  objects,  means  reliance  on  the  reality  and  perma¬ 
nence  of  Possibilities  of  ...  .  sensations,  when  no  such  sensations  are 
actually  experienced. “Our  sensations  we  carry  with  us  wherever  we 
go,  and  they  never  exist  where  we  are  not;  but  when  we  change  our  place 
we  do  not  carry  away  with  us  the  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation ; 
they  remain  until  we  return,  or  arise  and  cease  under  conditions  with 
which  our  presence  has  in  general  nothing  to  do.”^  Thirdly,  they  are 
socially  common.  For  “more  than  all  ...  .  they  are,  and  will  be  after 
we  have  ceased  to  feel.  Permanent  Possibilities  of  Sensation  to  other 
beings  than  ourselves.”  “The  permanent  possibilities  are  common  to 
us  and  to  our  fellow-creatures:  the  actual  sensations  are  not.”  “The 
world  of  Possible  Sensations  succeeding  one  another  according  to  laws  is 
as  much  in  other  beings  as  it  is  in  me,”  “it  has  therefore  an  existence 
outside  of  me;  it  is  an  External  World.”  “This  puts  the  final  seal  to 
our  conception  of  the  groups  of  possibilities  as  the  fundamental  reality 
in  Nature.”^  For  such  reasons  as  these  “our  actual  sensations  and  the 
permanent  possibilities  of  sensation,  stand  out  in  obtrusive  contrast  to 
one  another”;  and  “the  possibilities  ....  come  to  be  looked  upon  as 
much  more  real  than  the  actual  sensation;  nay,  as  the  very  realities  of 
which  these  are  only  the  ...  .  appearances. 


*  Ihid.,  237;  Berkeley,  279-81.  ^  Logic,  425<^j  d. 

2  Mill,  Hamilton,  239.  ^  Mill,  Hamilton,  244.  ^  Mill,  Hamilton,  242. 

i  Ibid.,  241.  ^  Ibid.,  24g-so.  ^  Ibid.,  240. 


i8 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


These  groupings  in  nature,  then,  no  longer  subsist  for  Mill  immedi¬ 
ately  between  mental  states  as  such,  but  are  composed  of  mental  states 
only  remotely  or  indirectly.  When  we  once  get  them  we  forget  their 
associational  origin  and  treat  them  in  an  entirely  naturalistic  fashion. 

In  the  second  place,  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  holds,  not  of  sen¬ 
sations  directly,  but  of  these  objects.  Precisely  as  substances  are  lifted 
from  groups  of  sensations  to  an  objective  level,  so  causal  connections 
between  these  substances  come  to  replace  mere  associations  between 
sensations.^  “In  addition  to  fixed  groups,  we  also  recognize  a  fixed 

Order  in  our  sensation . Now,  of  what  nature  is  this  fixed  order 

among  our  sensations  ?  It  is  a  constancy  of  antecedence  and  sequence. 
But  the  constant  antecedence  and  sequence  do  not  generally  exist  between 

one  actual  sensation  and  another . In  almost  all  the  constant 

sequences  which  occur  in  Nature,  the  antecedence  and  consequence  do 
not  obtain  between  sensations,  but  between  the  groups  we  have  been 
speaking  about,  of  which  a  very  small  portion  is  actual  sensation,  the 
greater  part  being  permanent  possibilities  of  sensation.  Hence,  our 
ideas  of  causation  ....  become  connected,  not  with  ....  our  sensa¬ 
tions  as  actual  at  all,  ....  but  with  groups  of  possibilities  of  sensa¬ 
tion.’’^ 

When  this  conception  of  causal  laws  has  been  obtained  it  is  supposed 
to  be  carried  to  the  farthest  limit  of  generalization,  and  is  treated  as  an 
absolute  character  of  the  objective  world.  Every  event  takes  place 
according  to  a  fixed  law  of  sequence,  and  the  whole  universe  is  law- 
abiding.  Mill  attempts  to  deduce  this  causal  character  of  the  whole 
course  of  the  universe,  somev/hat  as  he  did  its  independent  existence,  by 
a  complication  of  subjective  association  but  here  even  more  obviously 
than  there  he  must  leap  to  another  level  before  there  is  any  place  for  the 

^  Mill,  Berkeley,  288. 

2  Mill,  Hamilton,  239-40.  There  is  much  confusion  in  Mill  as  to  the  place  of 
sensation  in  the  causal  scheme.  Objective  things,  as  potentialities  of  sensation, 
apparently  include  all  actual  sensations  as  that  part  of  their  content  which  happens 
to  be  experienced.  If  so,  how  can  sensations  be  given  a  place  as  distinct  links  in  the 
causal  series  ?  This  is  to  duplicate  them.  This  is  similar  to  the  difficulty  in  Kant  of 
referring  sensations  to  things  in  themselves  as  causes  of  the  sensations,  although 
causation  is  properly  a  category  only  of  the  phenomenal  world,  which  consists  of 
objectively  organized  sensations.  This  confusion  in  Mill  suggests  the  difficulty  found 
by  neo-realists  in  assigning  to  consciousness  a  place  in  the  realistic  scheme.  The 
following  passages  in  Mill’s  Logic  may  be  consulted  in  this  connection  {46a,  496,  51a, 
$26,  576,  6$b-64a,  Sib,  82c,  242b,  451&,  589d-9oa). 


^  397-405- 


THE  WORLD  OF  OBJECTIVE  FACTS 


19 


conception  of  objective  things  and  laws.  Ostensibly  a  generalization 
from  particular  causal  connections,  it  is  taken  as  an  absolute  assumption 
by  which  each  of  them  may  be  tested. 

That  the  two  characters  of  the  objective  world  already  referred  to 
are  really  assumptions  independent  of  the  subjective  basis  on  which  they 
are  ostensibly  grounded  becomes  all  the  more  evident  when  we  consider 
its  third  character,  which  is  in  a  sense  the  limit  to  which  the  other  two  in 
combination  are  pushed.  For,  in  the  third  place.  Nature  is  taken  as  a 
single,  unitary  whole;  its  objects,  through  the  interaction  of  their  prop¬ 
erties,  forming  a  completely  interrelated  system,  whose  operations  are 
absolutely  determined.  “The  state  of  the  whole  universe  at  any  instant 
we  believe  to  be  the  consequence  of  its  state  at  the  previous  instant; 
insomuch  that  one  who  knew  all  the  agents  which  exist  at  the  present 
moment,  their  collocation  in  space,  and  all  their  properties,  ....  could 
predict  the  whole  subsequent  history  of  the  universe.”  “The  whole 
series  of  events  in  the  history  of  the  universe,  past  and  future,  is  ...  . 
capable,  in  its  own  nature,  of  being  constructed  a  priori  by  anyone 
whom  we  can  suppose  acquainted  with  the  original  distribution  of  all 
natural  agents,  and  with  the  whole  of  their  properties.”^  How  remote 
is  such  a  universe  from  an  accidental  agglomeration  of  given  mental 
states!  Mill  has  certainly  passed  here  completely  to  an  objective  and 
universal  level. 

Such  is  the  naturalistic  scheme  within  which  Mill,  when  he  presents 
the  method  of  inferential  procedure,  looks  for  the  data  of  inference. 
While  we  may  find  that  it  evinces  internal  difficulties  which  unfit  it  for 
this  purpose,  it  certainly  offers  a  sphere  for  the  operation  of  inference 
very  much  more  hopeful  in  appearance  than  that  of  immediate  subjective 
states.  The  objective  scheme  which  Mill  has  thus  obtained  bears  a 
striking  resemblance  to  that  of  Kant.^  The  three  features  to  which  we 
have  called  attention  correspond  closely  to  the  three  analogies  of  Kant 

^  2$oc-$ia. 

*  Professor  De  Laguna,  Dogmatism  and  Evolution,  179-82,  calls  attention  to  this 
resemblance,  but  in  the  main  rejects  it,  on  the  grounds,  first,  that  “the  forms  of  con¬ 
nection  which  Mill  considers  ....  are  not  intuitively  known  or  assured,”  and 
secondly,  that  “it  can  never  be  asserted  that  a  given  description  of  any  form  of  con¬ 
nection  is  adequate  or  final.”  But  the  general  causal  scheme,  which  is  the  factor  in 
Mill  corresponding  to  the  Kantian  categories,  is  taken  as  absolute.  Kant,  on  the 
one  hand,  recognizes  that  specific  causal  laws  must  be  learned  from  experience;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  form  of  connection,  when  Mill  once  gets  it,  operates  in  as  abso¬ 
lute  a  sense  in  Mill  as  in  Kant.  It  is  “adequate”  and  “final.”  See  such  passages 
as  237a,  25oc-sia,  345^^*  547^-48a. 


20  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 

as  organizing  principles  for  experience,  and  the  correspondence  can  in 
fact  be  pointed  out  in  considerably  fuller  detail  than  the  present  purpose 
will  permit.  Is  this  resemblance  merely  superficial,  or  is  it  significant  ? 

There  are  of  course  obvious  differences.  Mill  set  out  from  an 
empirical  standpoint,  and  intended  to  remain  an  empiricist.  He  repu¬ 
diated  any  contribution  to  experience  by  the  structure  of  the  mind  itself, 
and  tried,  as  we  have  seen,  to  trace  the  growth  of  even  the  most  fixed 
forms  of  nature  from  the  simplest  associative  connections.  Certainly 
Mill  did  not  mean  to  be  a  Kantian.  Yet  the  resemblance  is  not  without 
significance.  Mill  has  moved  a  considerable  part  of  the  way  from  Hume 
to  Kant. 

Hume  and  Kant  both  assume  a  congeries  of  mental  states  to  start 
with.  For  both,  these  mental  states  are  organized  into  objects.  Kant’s 
principles  of  organization  are  independent  of  the  content;  they  are 
formal,  contributed  by  the  intelligence  to  the  content.  Hence  the 
organization  of  the  object  has  universality  and  necessity.  Hume’s 
principles  of  organization  reside  in  the  content,  and  are  reducible  to  the 
principle  of  custom,  or  habit,  which  operates  through  contentual  laws  of 
association.  Such  organization  of  objects  cannot  have  universality  and 
necessity,  for  it  rests  on  mere  expectation,  and  the  actual  connections 
may  change  at  any  time.  Change  of  organization,  while  it  may  surprise, 
does  not  rob  the  object  of  what  for  Hume  renders  it  an  object.  Now 
what  sort  of  organization  of  objects  does  Mill  employ  ?  He  starts  with 
that  of  Hume,  and  avows  it  to  the  end.  But  after  professing  to  deduce 
substance  and  causality  as  higher  complications  of  empirical  association 
(or  habit  based  on  mere  empirical  relations  of  content),  he  uses  these 
objective  principles  of  substance  and  causality  (together  with  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  an  absolutely  reciprocal  system  of  nature  which  he  could  not  even 
profess  to  deduce  by  association)  as  though  they  were  absolute  principles 
which  he  can  bring  to  the  content  of  experience.  Though  he  would 
never  have  avowed  their  seat  in  the  constitution  of  the  knower,  he 
assumes  their  universality  and  necessity.^  That  is  to  say,  he  uses  them 
just  as  Kant  did.  Kant  had  shown  that  universality  and  necessity  of 
objects  must  be  assumed  independently  of  their  content;  and  in  uncon¬ 
scious  accordance  with  this  Mill  assumes  a  universality  and  necessity 
that,  as  we  have  seen,  could  not  have  been  properly  reached  by  his  asso- 
ciational  construction  of  substance  and  empirical  proof  of  causation. 
To  be  sure.  Mill  does  not  admit  the  conception  of  necessity;  but  he  has 
a  double  use  of  the  idea  of  universality,  one  of  which  amounts  to  the 

^  Compare  Joseph,  Introduction  to  Logic,  376  ff. 


THE  WORLD  OF  OBJECTIVE  FACTS 


21 


same  thing.  That  is  universal  in  one  sense  which  happens  to  be  uni¬ 
formly  experienced,  and  that  is  universal  in  another  sense  which  is  uni¬ 
form  in  nature  whether  experienced  or  not,  and  probably  in  no  case 
unambiguously  experienced;  this  latter  cannot  be  distinguished  from 
formal  necessity.  Indeed,  Mill’s  unconditional  universality,^  with  its 
exclusion  of  transient  force,^  is  precisely  Kant’s  necessity.  His  scheme 
of  objective  nature,  then,  is  Kantian  rather  than  Humian. 

The  significance  of  this  conclusion  for  our  purpose  lies  in  this,  that 
the  two  modes  of  organizing  experience  allow  a  very  different  place  for 
inference.  Hume  relies  directly  on  custom,  and  gets  no  place  at  all  for 
inference;  mental  states  simply  are  or  are  not;  they  are  all  equally  im¬ 
mediate.  Kant  relies  not  at  all  on  custom,  but  believes  himself  to  be  in 
possession  of  a  system  of  organizing  principles  independent  of  experience, 
which  put  objects  into  genuinely  objective  relations,  and  seem  to  make 
a  place  for  inference  regarding  them.  Now  Mill  holds  substantially  each 
of  these  positions  in  turn.  He  relies  indirectly  on  custom,  and  so  far  as 
he  does  so  has  no  place  for  inference,  as  we  saw  above;  but  when  he  has 
thus  reached  his  objective  principles  of  organization  they  then  work 
with  a  universality  unlike  that  of  Hume  and  like  that  of  Kant.  Mill 
therefore  is  able  to  produce  a  logic  which  was  impossible  to  pure  associa- 
tionism.  And  his  logic,  in  practically  all  of  its  actual  construction,  can 
be  regarded  as  based  on  a  purely  naturalistic  foundation.  After  once 
getting  to  the  level  where  its  procedure  is  worked  out.  Mill’s  logic  is  no 
longer  sensational  and  associational,  but  realistic,  and  must  be  judged 
on  that  ground.  One  motive,  it  is  true,  among  others  in  constructing 
his  logic  was  to  vindicate  the  associational  philosophy  by  showing  that 
a  logic  could  be  built  upon  it,^  but  such  a  vindication  would  of  course 
have  to  rest  in  part  upon  the  cogency  of  the  transition  from  the  subjective 
to  the  objective  level,  as  well  as  upon  the  adequacy  of  procedure  of  a 
quasi-realistic  logic  after  the  objective  level  has  been  reached.  We  have 
tried  to  show  that  the  transition  is  not  cogent.  The  difficulties  of  the 
realistic  logic  to  which  it  leads  Mill  will  appear  below. 


*  244C-46C. 

*  236!. 

3  Mill,  Autobiography,  226. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  UNIVERSALITY  OF  ATTRIBUTES  AND  PROPOSITIONS 

So  far  we  have  considered  Mill’s  facts,  whether  subjective  or  objec¬ 
tive,  as  bare  particulars.  This  is  entirely  fair  to  Mill’s  official  and 
avowed  empiricism.  But  such  facts  would  be  of  no  service  to  the  logi¬ 
cian;  for  they  would  be  completely  cut  off  from  each  other,  giving  no 
play  for  an  interpretative  process  to  bind  them  together.  Facts  as  mere 
facts  are  never  repeated.  Mill  accordingly  imports  into  them  a  universal 
element  by  endowing  them  with  attributes.  This  he  does  quite  naively, 
not  suspecting  that  in  using  attributes  in  a  universal  sense  he  has  aban¬ 
doned  his  original  attitude  toward  facts. 

We  have  already  met  with  attributes  in  Mill’s  discussion  of  facts  as 
the  data  of  inference.  We  must  now  consider  their  function  more  par¬ 
ticularly.  Attributes  serve  Mill  in  three  ways:  first,  to  reinforce  the 
ultimate  identity  of  subjective  and  objective  facts;  secondly,  to  furnish 
a  bond  of  unity  between  facts;  thirdly,  to  give  content  to  propositions. 
This  last  function  of  attributes  is  consciously  avowed  by  Mill;  the 
service  of  the  two  former  is  somewhat  surreptitious. 

In  his  use  of  the  word  attribute  Mill  glides  from  one  meaning  to 
another.  At  first  the  attribute  is  the  quality  of  the  sensation,  already 
giving  the  sensation  a  universal  aspect.^  The  attribute  is  then  trans¬ 
ferred  to  the  thing,  as  the  power  the  thing  has  of  exciting  a  sensation.^ 
This  mode  of  statement  is  first  suggested  very  hesitatingly,  but  later 
accepted  without  reserve.^  The  exciting  of  actual  sensations  at  length 
falls  out  entirely,  and  attributes  become  the  mere  potentialities  of  causing 
them.4  xhe  world  of  nature,  with  all  its  objective  causal  relations,  can 
then  be  described  as  a  realistic  system  in  terms  of  attributes,  now  under 
the  name  of  properties.^  Thus  attributes  carry  Mill  over  by  an  easy 
transition  from  subjective  to  objective  facts. 

Again,  the  attribute  is  the  universal  element  needed  by  Mill  to  bind 
together  his  merely  particular  facts.  Attributes  give  meaning  to  such 
facts  precisely  by  their  universality,  and  the  particulars  could  get  mean¬ 
ing  in  no  other  way.  So  Mill’s  doctrine  of  meaning  is  one  of  intention, 
not  of  extension.  “We  may  frame  a  class  without  knowing  ....  any 

^  57^,  and  many  passages.  3  636 . 

*  SjfsSa,  58c.  4  86a.  s  25o6-5ia. 

22 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  ATTRIBUTES  AND  PROPOSITIONS  23 

of  the  individuals  of  which  it  may  be  composed;  we  may  do  so  while 
believing  that  no  such  individuals  exist.  If  by  the  meaning  of  a  general 
name  are  to  be  understood  the  things  which  it  is  the  name  of,  no  general 

name,  except  by  accident,  has  a  fixed  meaning  at  all . The  only 

mode  in  which  any  general  name  has  a  definite  meaning,  is  by  being  a 
name  of  an  indefinite  variety  of  things;  namely,  of  all  things,  known  or 
unknown^  past,  present,  or  future,  which  possess  certain  definite  attri¬ 
butes.”^  This  seems  to  give  something  very  like  a  world  of  meanings 
over  against  a  world  of  facts.  The  meanings  are  fixed  in  themselves, 
and  it  is  a  mere  accident  whether  any  corresponding  particular  exists  or 
not.  “General  names  ....  have  a  meaning,  quite  independently  of 
their  being  the  names  of  a  class.  That  circumstance  is  in  truth  acci¬ 
dental,  it  being  wholly  immaterial  to  the  signification  of  the  name  whether 
there  are  many  objects,  or  only  one,  to  which  it  happens  to  be  applicable, 
or  whether  there  be  any  at  all.”  “  Every  name  the  signification  of  which 
is  constituted  by  attributes  is  potentially  a  name  of  an  indefinite  number 
of  objects;  but  it  need  not  actually  be  the  name  of  any.”^  It  is  quite 
true  that  Mill  denies  to  these  meanings  an  objective  existence;  attributes 
are  not  real  things.^  Yet  the  meaning  spills  over  the  particular  fact,  and 
proves  to  be  an  identity  above  the  particulars.  Spencer  criticizes  Mill 
on  this  ground,  charging  him  with  confounding  likeness  of  attributes  and 
their  identity.  Mill  rejoins  that  likeness  of  attributes  is  identity:  “The 
common  something  which  gives  a  meaning  to  the  general  name,  Mr. 
Spencer  can  only  say,  ....  is  the  similarity;  ....  and  I  rejoin,  the 

attribute  is  precisely  that  similarity . The  things  compared  are 

many,  but  the  something  common  to  all  of  them  must  be  conceived  as 
one.”4 

Mill  stands  here  in  a  position  of  unstable  equilibrium.  For  him 
nothing  but  particular  facts  can  be  actual;  his  entire  empiricism  is  here 
at  stake.  Yet  the  particular  can  be  expressed  in  terms  of  attributes,  and 
each  attribute  is  identical,  in  however  many  facts.  It  is  an  absolute 
universal.  Even  further,  as  we  have  seen,  an  attribute  need  not  actually 
imply  a  fact  at  all.  The  attributes  as  such,  then,  present  a  timeless 
system  of  characters  without  particularity. 

Mill  here  betrays  the  inevitable  difficulty  of  assuming  that  particular 
facts  are  independent  and  isolated.  This  is  due  to  a  failure  to  realize 

^  78e  (italics  mine). 

2  946.  Cf.  84a.  In  neo-realistic  terminology  it  may  be  the  name  of  a  subsist- 
ent,  not  an  existent. 

3  1366. 


4  i37(;;  Spencer,  Principles  of  Psychology,  125-27. 


24 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILLS  LOGIC 


that  it  is  impossible  to  speak  of  particular  facts  without  implying  the 
presence  of  a  person  that  has  an  interest  in  the  facts,  and  to  whom  there¬ 
fore  they  are  not  mere  particulars.  Provisionally  and  for  certain  pur¬ 
poses,  to  be  sure,  it  is  necessary  to  treat  facts  as  independent;  but  their 
independence  is  still  the  way  they  are  being  treated.  The  results  of  the 
logical  process  cannot  be  made  valid  in  absolute  independence  of  the 
interest  in  that  process.  An  attribute  is  attributed.  Particulars  and  uni¬ 
versal  are  strictly  correlative.  Any  attempt  to  get  a  logic  out  of  mere 
particulars  therefore  puts  one  under  compulsion,  whether  surreptitiously, 
like  Mill,  or  avowedly,  like  Bradley,  to  read  into  the  particulars  a  sys¬ 
tem  of  absolute  universals. 

In  the  next  place,  it  is  this  universality  of  attributes  that  furnishes 
Mill  a  content  for  the  proposition.  This  will  appear  as  we  examine  his 
doctrine  of  propositions. 

Mill  uses  the  term  “proposition,”  rather  than  “judgment,”  because 
he  regards  the  latter  term  as  emphasizing  too  much  the  mental  processes 
involved.  It  is  the  import,  not  the  psychology  of  the  judgment,  in  which 
he  is  interested,  and  this  he  thinks  is  best  expressed  in  the  term  “propo¬ 
sition.”^  This  choice  of  terms  serves  to  bring  into  clearer  setting  the 
transition  from  an  associational  psychology  of  particulars  to  a  logic  of 
universals.  For  the  import  of  a  proposition  is  supposed  to  be  quite  inde¬ 
pendent  of  belief.  It  is  subject  to  belief,  but  is  not  constituted  by  belief.^ 
The  import  is  the  universal  meaning  of  what  is  asserted  in  the  proposition, 
and  is  not  conditioned  by  the  way  in  which  the  assertion  arose,  or  the 
service  rendered  by  the  assertion  to  the  one  making  it. 

Mill  does  not  fully  face  the  difficulty  of  reconciling  such  a  theory  of 
propositions  with  his  empiricism.  His  first  analysis  of  the  proposition 
as  an  assertion  of  something  about  something,  upon  which  he  dwells  at 
length,^  takes  its  cue  superficially  from  the  verbal  form,  and  for  our 
purpose  it  can  be  passed  over.  Much  more  significant  is  Mill’s  account 
of  the  proposition  as  an  assertion  about  facts.  The  true  subject  of  the 
proposition  is  one  or  more  facts.^  Indeed,  matter-of-fact  and  assertion 
are  expressly  identified.^  But  how  can  this  be  ?  Mere  particular  facts 
as  such  are  not  asserted;  they  merely  are.  The  assertion  of  a  fact  surely 
implies  a  standpoint  outside  the  fact.  How  then  can  facts  get  into 
propositions? 


'  73- 

®  Contrast  27c  with  21&,  73a,  74a,  and  75&. 
3  6^d,  and  elsewhere. 


4 121&. 
5  836. 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  ATTRIBUTES  AND  PROPOSITIONS 


25 


Facts  get  into  propositions  by  virtue  of  the  universality  of  their 
attributes.  Matter-of-fact  and  import  of  proposition  are  identical^ 
because  every  fact  can  be  expressed  in  terms  of  universal  attributes. 
The  particular  existence  of  a  fact  is  overflowed  by  its  universal  character, 
and  it  is  the  latter  that  gets  recognition  in  Mill’s  proposition.  Bradley’s 
vigorous  attack  on  Mill’s  associationism  leaves  this  out  of  consideration. 
If  Mill  had  remained  a  consistent  associationist,  Bradley’s  strictures 
would  apply;  and  they  are  no  doubt  justified  in  so  far  as  Mill  fails 
explicitly  to  acknowledge  a  system  of  universals.  But  they  ignore  the 
use  which  Mill  makes  of  the  universal  character  of  every  fact  in  his 
doctrine  of  import.  Mill  rides  two  horses,  not  always  very  steadily 
keeping  them  abreast;  it  is  not  entirely  clear,  however,  that  Bradley 
does  better  to  reduce  the  two  to  a  double-natured  monster,  with  existence 
and  meaning  inside  one  skin.^ 

The  difficulties  of  the  position,  if  no  greater  in  Mill,  are  perhaps  more 
obvious,  and  therefore  more  easily  pointed  out.  The  particular  fact, 
taken  as  merely  given,  and  as  such  independent  of  the  knower,  has  to  be 
matched  with  a  universal  meaning,  belonging  to  an  absolute  system  of 
meanings,  with  an  import  also  as  such  independent  of  the  knower.  The 
universal  character  of  attributes  has  played  the  trick.  Committed  from 
the  start  to  particular  facts.  Mill  finds  these  facts  capable  of  description 
in  terms  of  universal  attributes,  which  forthwith  give  content  for  univer¬ 
sal  propositions.  Such  is  the  transition  from  givenness  to  import,  from 
fact  to  proposition. 

The  import  of  propositions  assumes  a  system  of  time  relations,  a 
system  of  space  relations,  and  a  system  of  qualitative  universal  attributes. 
Different  attributes  may  evidently  bear  to  each  other  time  and  space 
relations,  and  an  identical  attribute  may  appear  in  different  times  and 
spaces.  These  assumptions  were  not  explicitly  systematized  by  Mill,^ 
but  they  lie  at  the  basis  of  the  three  fundamental  relations  of  matter-of- 
fact  asserted  in  propositions:  coexistence,  succession,  and  resemblance.-^ 
To  these  Mill  adds  two  other  relations:  existence  and  causation.  Exist¬ 
ence  is  in  the  last  analysis  apparently  reducible  to  the  others.  Causa¬ 
tion  is  a  very  special  form  of  succession  into  whose  significance  we  must 
inquire  later,  when  we  consider  the  problem  it  presents  to  inference. 

"  836,  8s&. 

^  Bradley,  Pvinciples  of  Logic,  in  various  relevant  passages;  see  especially  Book  II, 
Part  II,  chaps,  ii  and  iii. 

3  As  they  have  been,  for  example,  by  the  neo-realists. 

4  80-85. 


\ 


26  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 

The  whole  import  of  propositions  reduces  at  last  to  accompaniment  of 
attributes.^ 

In  this  view  of  the  import  of  propositions  Mill  seems  to  have  brushed 
aside  the  particulars  in  nature  and  to  have  grasped  its  universal  laws. 
Nature  operates  always  in  accordance  with  ultimate  laws  that  cannot 
fail  to  be  universal.  A  complete  statement  of  them  would  be  a  complete 
account  of  nature.  Our  propositions  are  attempts  to  approximate  such 
a  statement.  We  are  not  sure  that  any  of  the  uniformities  with  which 
we  are  yet  acquainted  are  ultimate  laws;  but  we  know  that  there  must 
be  ultimate  laws;  and  that  every  resolution  of  a  derivative  law  into  more 
general  laws  brings  us  nearer  to  them.”^  The  whole  course  of  nature, 
it  seems,  is  statable  in  terms  of  propositions,  and  the  business  of  infer¬ 
ence  is  to  approximate  as  closely  as  possible  to  such  a  statement.  It 
matters  not  what  prompted  the  statement,  for  the  psychology  of  belief 
is  irrelevant;  the  statement  if  correct  expresses  an  accompaniment  of 
attributes  as  it  is  in  nature,  entirely  objective,  wholly  determined,  and 
absolutely  universal.  If  nature  in  one  aspect  consists  solely  of  par¬ 
ticular  facts,  in  another  aspect  it  consists  of  universal  laws.  In  his  scheme 
of  inductive  inference  Mill  attempts  to  bring  these  together,  though  the 
result  is  rather  to  oscillate  between  them  than  to  harmonize  them. 


^  80c,  2>$d. 
"  345C- 


CHAPTER  IV 

INFERENCE  AS  ANTICIPATION  OF  FACTS 

There  are  two  ways  of  looking  at  inference.  To  distinguish  them 
will  give  us  a  point  of  view  from  which  to  criticize  Milks  account  of  infer¬ 
ence.  On  the  one  hand,  inference  may  be  viewed  as  a  process,  whereby 
knowledge  is  genuinely  increased  and  there  is  an  actual  reconstruction 
of  content.  On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  viewed  as  a  relation  within 
content,  by  which  one  part  of  the  content  implies  another.  From  the 
first  point  of  view,  in  describing  any  case  of  inference  we  are  bound  to 
consider  the  state  of  knowledge  of  the  person  that  makes  the  inference, 
both  before  and  after  the  inference  is  made,  and  to  see  what  has  thereby 
happened  to  his  knowledge  and  why  it  happened.  Inference  thus  con¬ 
sidered  is  the  reconstruction  of  a  specific  situation.  If,  in  the  light  of 
the  knowledge  obtained  by  the  inference,  we  then  try  to  state  by  what 
right  the  inference  was  made,  we  pass  over  into  the  other  view  of  infer¬ 
ence.  The  inference  is  then  no  longer  a  reconstruction  of  content,  but 
a  relation  within  content.  Now  the  formal  analysis  of  inference  always 
ignores  the  process  of  reconstruction.  It  is  bound  to  take  its  stand  in 
the  light  either  of  the  lesser  knowledge  preceding  the  inference  or  of  the 
greater  knowledge  succeeding  the  inference;  usually  the  latter.  In 
either  case  the  inference  as  a  movement  of  thought  disappears.  For  in 
the  earlier  content  taken  just  as  it  stood  there  was  no  implication  corre¬ 
sponding  to  the  inference;  that  is,  in  the  light  only  of  the  knowledge 
previous  to  the  inference  the  inference  cannot  be  seen  as  valid,  for  if  it 
had  then  appeared  as  valid  it  would  already  have  been  made.  But  in  the 
light  of  the  fuller  knowledge  after  the  inference,  the  inference  would  not 
need  to  be  made;  so  that  when  the  content  of  the  later  knowledge  is 
analyzed  to  find  an  inferential  relation  within  it  the  inference  appears 
to  be  tautologous.  Taking  inference  then  as  a  relation  within  a  fixed 
content,  it  must  be  either  invalid  or  tautologous;  the  premises  either 
involve  the  conclusion  or  do  not.^  In  the  study  of  inference  there  is  of 
course  a  place  for  formal  analysis;  it  need  not  mislead  if,  while  we  pro¬ 
visionally  take  that  point  of  view,  we  expect  the  inference  as  analyzed 

^  “If  the  Syllogism  yields  novelty,  it  begs  the  question.  If  it  disclaims  novelty, 
it  becomes  vain  repetition.  As  a  form,  therefore,  it  is  either  futile  or  false”  (Schiller, 
Formal  Logic ^  208).  This  applies  to  all  formal  proof. 

27 


28 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


to  appear  either  tautologous  or  invalid.  We  can  at  once  escape  this 
dilemma  by  returning  to  the  other  point  of  view,  from  which  we  con¬ 
sider  the  inference  as  it  was  actually  carried  through.  To  do  this  with 
full  consciousness  of  what  it  means  would  reconstruct  the  formal  analysis 
of  inference,  and  would  relegate  it  to  a  subordinate  place. 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  Mill  that  in  his  theory  of  inference  and  its  rela¬ 
tion  to  fact  he  set  out  to  introduce  a  logical  reform  of  this  kind.  He 
proposed  a  logic  of  truth  instead  of  a  logic  of  consistency.^  He  made 
inference  pass  from  the  known  to  the  unknown,  a  process  of  discovery. 
It  was  to  proceed  from  particular  facts,  and  to  lead  to  particular  facts. 
Mill  certainly  was  feeling  for  the  concrete  process  of  inferential  recon¬ 
struction.  Yet  in  detail  he  failed  to  maintain  this  attitude.  His  con¬ 
ception  of  facts  as  definitely  given  interposed  itself,  and  prevented  him 
from  appreciating  the  concrete  and  really  significant  reconstructive 
function  of  inference,  so  that  he  fell  back  into  the  formal  attitude  toward 
inference  as  a  relation  of  content.  Endeavoring  then  to  extricate  him¬ 
self  from  this  formal  position,  and  to  recover  the  reconstructive  process 
of  inference  which  he  had  lost,  he  comes  upon  the  experience  of  actual 
discovery,  but  regards  it  for  the  most  part  as  only  subsidiary  to  inference, 
and  even  to  the  end  fails  to  grasp  its  real  function  in  inference  and  its 
true  relation  to  fact. 

In  this  way  Mill  oscillates  between  three  quite  different  conceptions 
of  inference.  The  conception  with  which  he  sets  out  is  that  of  antici¬ 
pation  of  experience.  On  the  ground  of  given  facts  other  facts  are 
anticipated.  His  formula  for  such  inference  is  “from  particulars  to 
particulars.”  The  establishing  of  this  as  the  character  of  inference  Mill 
believes  to  be  a  vindication  of  empiricism.^  A  universal  need  not  inter¬ 
vene  between  the  particular  facts  on  which  the  inference  is  grounded  and 
the  particular  facts  to  which  the  inference  points;  if  a  universal  does 
intervene  it  is  accidental,  merely  a  convenient  safeguard  against  error. 
Nevertheless  it  appears  that  a  universal  always  could  be  made  to  inter¬ 
vene,  and  if  an  inference  is  justified  at  all,  then  by  the  same  token  a 
universal  is  justified.  Thus  Mill  comes  to  the  second  conception  of 
inference  as  the  proof  of  universal  propositions.  The  main  body  of  his 
inductive  technique  is  built  on  this  conception.  But  inference  as  the 
proof  of  propositions  cannot  finally  leave  out  of  account  the  source  of 
propositions,  the  way  in  which  they  come  to  be  proposed  for  proof. 
Inference,  in  short,  is  variously  considered  by  Mill  as  the  anticipation 

"  25,  236c. 

2  Liard,  Les  Logiciens  Anglais  Contemporains,  5th  ed.,  24-27. 


INFERENCE  AS  ANTICIPATION  OF  FACTS 


29 


of  particular  facts,  the  proof  of  universal  propositions,  and  the  discovery 
of  universal  propositions,  though  Mill  seems  unaware  that  he  has  shifted 
his  ground  in  passing  from  one  to  the  other.  Mill  is  not  at  fault,  indeed, 
in  holding  to  these  three  conceptions  as  genuine  aspects  of  the  inferential 
process;  his  error  is  in  treating  each  in  isolation  from  the  others  and  in 
misconceiving  the  relation  of  each  to  facts.  Let  us  examine  each  of  the 
three  in  turn. 

Mill  finds  inference  generally  acknowledged  to  be  of  two  kinds: 
inference  from  particulars  to  generals,  and  from  generals  to  particulars, 
or  induction  and  ratiocination,  the  latter  being  expressed  in  the  syllo¬ 
gism.^  Mill  upholds  a  third  type  of  inference,  not  only  as  valid,  but  as 
the  foundation  of  both  the  others.”  Indeed  “ all  inference  is  from  par¬ 
ticulars  to  particulars.”"'  A  universal  may  or  may  not  intervene;  if  it 
does,  it  merely  breaks  up  the  inference  from  particulars  to  particulars 
into  two  parts,  the  first  ending  with  the  universal,  the  second  beginning 
with  it.  The  actual  inference  is  always  from  particular  facts  to  other 
particular  facts,  and  whether  it  passes  through  the  universal  on  the  way 
or  leaps  directly  from  facts  to  facts  without  a  universal  does  not  alter 
the  nature  of  inference  as  such.  The  general  proposition  is  merely  a 
register  of  inferences  already  made  from  the  facts,  or  a  formula  for 
making  more. 

The  doctrine  then  is  this,  that  inference  is  in  its  nature  a  passage 
from  particular  facts  to  other  particular  facts^  without  the  necessary 
mediation  of  a  universal.  There  are  several  fundamental  difficulties  in 
this  conception  of  inference. 

First,  there  is  such  a  process  in  experience,  but  it  is  unreflective,  and 
cannot  properly  be  called  inference.  It  is  habit.  When  Mill  offers 
examples  of  inference  which  shall  be  purely  from  particulars  to  par¬ 
ticulars,  he  finds  himself  reduced  precisely  to  cases  of  habit."*  The 
avoidance  of  fire  by  the  child,  and  by  the  dog  as  well,  and  the  skilful  use 
of  weapons  and  tools — these  do  involve  anticipations  of  experience  on 
the  basis  of  previous  experience,  but  they  are  not  logical  processes.  In 
some  cases  they  may  have  grown  out  of  an  earlier  inferential  process,  but 
they  need  not  have  done  so.  They  may  rest  on  purely  unreflective  asso¬ 
ciation.  The  mother  who  prescribes  a  remedy  to  a  neighbor’s  child 
because  it  cured  her  own  Lucy^  can  scarcely  be  supposed  not  to  make 
some  use  of  a  “general  proposition”;  but  if  she  does  not,  as  Mill  assumes, 


'  I2SC. 

*  146c. 

3  Or  to  one  other. 


4  1426?,  143a,  c,  i44<^>  b. 
s  143&. 


30 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILVS  LOGIC 


then  she  has  made  no  inference  at  all,  but  repeats  an  operation  under 
repeated  circumstances  by  mere  force  of  habit. 

Secondly,  when  action  rises  above  mere  habit  and  becomes  reflective, 
a  universal  is  required.  A  particular,  if  reflectively  taken  as  a  particular, 
implies  a  universal.  Mill  begs  the  question  when  he  finds  himself  bound 
to  call  the  particular  facts  “  cases.  An  inference  from  facts  to  facts  is 
justified  only  if  both  sets  of  facts  are  seen  to  be  cases;  cases,  that  is,  to 
which  the  same  rule  will  apply;  cases  of  the  same  universal.^ 

The  emphasis  on  the  universal,  it  is  true,  may  be  shifted  either  to  the 
beginning  of  the  inference  or  to  the  end  The  universal  may  then  be 
alternately  located  at  either  end  of  the  process.  If  the  cases  from  which 
one  infers  are  considered  as  particular,  then  any  case  to  which  one  infers 
is  only  one  of  an  indefinite  number  of  possible  cases,  or  is  the  application 
of  a  law.  If  the  cases  to  which  one  infers  are  considered  as  particular, 
then  they  are  anticipated  on  the  basis  of  the  law  which  was  exemplified 
in  the  cases  from  which  one  infers.  That  is,  one  infers  either  from  par¬ 
ticulars  to  a  law  which  includes  other  particulars  or  to  particulars  from 
a  law  that  is  exemplified  in  previous  particulars.  One  may  be  more 
concerned  under  given  conditions  with  the  origin  or  with  the  application 
of  the  law,  but  cannot  dispense  with  it  as  essential  to  the  inference. 
Mill  seems  to  do  so  only  because  he  oscillates  from  one  end  of  the  process 
to  the  other,  in  each  case  leaving  the  universal  to  operate  at  the  opposite 
end.  In  the  one  case  the  general  proposition  is  a  register  of  observations, 
and  the  inference  is  still  to  take  place  in  the  other  case  the  inference 
has  already  taken  place,  and  the  general  proposition  is  a  formula  for 
making  more  inferences  like  it.^  Between  the  two  the  inference  plays 
successful  hide-and-seek  with  the  universal. 

That  inference  cannot  dispense  with  a  universal  is  due  to  the  hypo¬ 
thetical  character  of  the  latter.  The  universal  cannot  itself  be  experi¬ 
enced,  and  is  never  a  mere  record  of  past  experience.  It  represents  a 
hypothetical  interpretation  of  any  future  experience  so  far  as  it  can  be 
taken  in  terms  of  the  past  experience.^  Past  experience  points  to  like 
future  experience  if  it  is  really  the  same.  If  the  unobserved  particular 
is  a  similar  ‘‘case,”  the  inference  is  valid.  The  transition  through  the 
“if”  signifies  the  mediation  of  a  universal. 

^  1256,  i^id,  149a. 

2  “A  general  truth  is  but  an  aggregate  of  particular  truths;  a  comprehensive 

expression,  by  which  an  indefinite  number  of  individual  facts  are  afl&rmed  and  denied 
at  once”  But  “aggregate”  and  “indefinite”  are  contradictory,  and  this 

contradiction  lurks  everywhere  in  Mill’s  treatment  of  “cases.” 

3  141C,  147&,  1516.  142a,  hy  148&. 


s  1506. 


INFERENCE  AS  ANTICIPATION  OF  FACTS 


31 


What  do  we  mean  by  the  universal  in  inference,  and  why  is  it  needed  ? 
It  is  true  that  all  problems  and  all  solutions  and  therefore  all  inferences 
are  specific.  Had  Mill,  by  the  use  of  his  formula  “from  particulars  to 
particulars”  intended  to  support  this  aspect  of  inference,  he  might  well 
have  pressed  it  farther  than  he  did.  But  he  omitted  the  reflective  ele¬ 
ment  of  inference,  the  necessity  we  are  under  to  carry  with  us  a  set  of 
possible  interpretations  of  new  experience.  This  interpretative  tendency 
is  the  universal;  it  is  what  renders  inference  reflective  where  habit  would 
be  unreflective.  In  actual  use  the  universal  has  no  absolute  meaning. 
Absolute  meanings  are  fictions  of  the  logician.  When  we  interpret  what 
we  take  to  be  the  new  “cases”  in  “the  light  of”  the  old,  that  light  is  the 
universal.^  It  is  the  deliberate  readiness  to  treat  them,  when  under  the 
pressure  of  uncertainty,  as  cases.  General  language  has  crystallized 
these  interpretations  into  a  highly  elaborate  system,  with  its  own  tech¬ 
nique;  but  the  relative  independence  and  permanence  of  the  language 
must  not  be  allowed  to  obscure  the  essentially  instrumental  character 
of  the  universal  which  the  language  expresses.  It  is  here  that  Mill  failed 
to  free  himself  from  the  conceptions  of  formal  logic,  and  let  go  the  very 
factor  which  would  have  revitalized  his  system:  the  play  of  the  universal 
as  the  reflective  interpretation  of  new  experience  in  the  light  of  the  old. 

Thirdly,  Mill’s  attack  upon  the  syllogism  as  a  petitio  principii  is  due 
to  this  failure  to  appreciate  the  interpretative  function  of  the  universal 
in  the  actual  process  of  inference.  All  inference,  if  treated  as  he  treated 
the  syllogism,  becomes  a  petitio;  for  the  syllogism  avowedly  expresses 
the  content  of  the  inference  after  it  has  been  made,  and  is  therefore 
tautologous.  All  inference,  when  passed  through  and  looked  back  upon, 
must  appear  tautologous;  if  its  content  did  not  admit  of  tautologous 
statement  it  would  be  invalid.  Mill’s  strictures  apply  equally  well  to  his 
own  inferences  from  and  to  particulars.  Are  the  earlier  and  later  facts 
both  “cases”  ?  If  they  are  not,  the  inference  is  not  valid.  If  they  are, 
then  no  inference  is  needed;  for  the  later  cases  merely  add  themselves 
to  the  earlier  as  more  of  the  same.  Just  so  long  as  Mill  takes  the  content 
of  his  particular  facts  in  the  same  fixed  and  unquestioned  way  in  which 
he  takes  the  premises  of  the  syllogism,  all  actual  inference  is  inevitably 
shut  out. 

*  Through  the  collision  and  breakdown  of  habits  their  content  becomes  reflective. 
This  reflective  content  of  what  was  a  habit  is  now  a  universal.  We  continue  to  gain 
universals  in  this  way;  but  after  this  type  of  experience  is  once  established  the  system 
of  universals  may  be  built  up  in  other  ways,  as  by  verbal  instruction.  The  materials 
of  the  universal  must  always  have  arisen  out  of  what  was  unreflective. 


32 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


Fourthly,  this  suggests  the  difficulty  that  in  Mill’s  scheme  of  inference 
the  fundamental  function  of  inference  in  meeting  an  attitude  of  inquiry 
is  ignored/  Mill  takes  the  knowledge  of  certain  facts  and  proposes  to 
infer  other  facts  from  them.  If  this  is  merely  the  addition  of  more  facts 
it  is  not  inference,  as  we  have  seen.  It  is  inference  only  if  the  facts  are 
not  adequately  known.  In  any  actual  case  of  inference  the  primary 
problem  is  to  ascertain  what  are  the  facts.  We  should  have  no  occasion 
to  think  of  facts  in  a  situation  that — so  to  speak — was  all  fact.  A 
‘‘question  of  fact”  emerges  because  the  situation  contains  more  than 
mere  fact;  it  contains  (i)  certain  contradictions  or  difficulties  that  impel 
to  further  inquiry  about  facts;  (2)  various  more  or  less  tentative  con¬ 
structions  which  aim  to  clear  away  these  difficulties. 

Here  we  strike  the  root  of  the  matter.  Mill  has  a  favorite  formula 
for  inference  which  describes  it  as  procedure  from  the  known  to  the 
unknown.^  This  formula  may  no  doubt  be  given  an  interpretation  which 
renders  it  a  correct  description;  but  it  is  quite  as  correct  to  say  that 
inference  is  procedure  from  the  unknown  to  the  known.  When  facts 
are  adequately  known  there  is  no  occasion  for  inference.  But  when  our 
knowledge  of  the  facts  breaks  down,  and  it  is  not  known  just  what  the 
facts  are,  then  inference  comes  in  as  an  effort  to  interpret  the  facts  in 
such  a  way  that  they  shall  be  adequately  known.  Inference,  one  might 
say,  aims  to  transform  the  unknown  into  the  known.  The  relation 
between  inference  and  facts  is  never  so  simple  or  so  one-sided  as  Mill 
supposes;  it  is  a  relation  of  mutual  dependence. 

In  view  of  this  attitude  of  inquiry  that  underlies  all  inference  it  is 
necessary  to  reject  in  principle  the  sharp  distinction  Mill  maintains 
between  the  earlier  cases  which  justify  the  inference  and  any  later  case 
to  which  it  is  applied,  though  in  the  practical  technique  of  inference  the 
distinction  has  a  relative  value.  The  facts  which  prompt  the  inference 
are  first  determined  as  “cases”  by  the  inference,  which  is  designed  to 
meet  one  of  the  two  questions:  “0/  what  are  they  cases  ?”  or,  ^^Are  they 
really  cases  ?”  They  are  therefore  the  very  facts  to  which  the  inference 
applies.  It  is  true  of  course  that  an  inferential  situation  may  be  ex¬ 
tremely  complex,  some  factors  in  it  more  fixed,  others  more  fluid;  and 
at  successive  stages  of  the  process  it  may  be  useful  to  consider  some  the 
data  and  others  the  conclusion.  Yet  in  principle  Mill’s  sharp  separation 
of  the  data  and  the  conclusion  must  be  denied.  In  inference  we  do  not 

This  consideration  has  been  well  worked  out  by  Professor  A.  W.  Moore,  of 
Chicago,  in  a  seminar  on  “Modern  Logical  Theories,”  to  which  the  writer  is  greatly 
indebted. 

2  1256,  126a,  139a,  2ioe,  223^-24^. 


INFERENCE  AS  ANTICIPATION  OF  FACTS 


33 


first  get  a  set  of  facts,  ticketed  and  fully  known,  to  serve  as  data  of  an 
inference,  and  after  an  interval  another  fact  conveniently  ticketed  to 
receive  the  application  of  the  inference.  That,  as  we  have  seen,  would 
be  a  fair  description  of  the  operation  of  habit,  if  under  knowledge  of  any¬ 
thing  we  were  to  include  any  ability  to  deal  with  it.  But  it  is  not  a 
correct  description  of  inference.  In  inference  the  data  and  the  con¬ 
clusion  must  come  together  in  organic  relation,  and  it  is  precisely  at  the 
point  where  they  do  come  together  in  a  single  interpretation  that  infer¬ 
ence  takes  place. 

In  short.  Milks  account  of  inference  from  particulars  to  particulars, 
which  actually  applies  better  to  habit,  implies  two  situations,  an  earlier 
and  a  later.  He  oscillates  between  these,  because  he  seems  vaguely  to 
have  perceived  that  in  either  of  them  inference  may  appear.  There  is 
no  inference  unless  some  factor  in  the  situation  is  brought  into  question, 
but  the  question  may  turn  upon  the  formulation  of  a  new  universal  or 
upon  the  selection  of  an  old  universal.  In  both  formulation  and  selec¬ 
tion  of  a  universal  the  “cases”  are  seen  to  be  such  only  in  relation  to  the 
universal,  but  in  the  one  the  question  looks  toward  the  universal,  in  the 
other  it  looks  from  it.  This  is  to  say  that  either  the  major  or  the  minor 
premise  of  a  possible  syllogism  may  be  placed  in  question.  Mill  is 
right  in  breaking  inference  from  particulars  to  particulars  into  two  parts; 
but  wrong  in  considering  the  universal  an  unessential  division-point 
between  them.  He  is  right  in  excluding  inference  sometimes  from  one 
part  and  sometimes  from  the  other;  but  wrong  in  denying  that  it  may 
be  in  either. 

Indeed,  Milks  position  is  shifted  when  he  comes  to  consider  the  tech¬ 
nique  of  inference.  He  virtually  recognizes  the  necessity  of  the  universal 
when  he  acknowledges  that  any  data  which  justify  an  inference  to  a 
particular  will  justify  an  inference  to  a  universal  as  well,^  and  that  the 
validity  of  the  inference  can  be  shown  only  by  drawing  the  universal 
explicitly Thenceforth  in  his  discussion  the  process  of  inference  is 
made  to  consist  in  the  establishing  of  general  propositions.  He  might 
well  have  explicitly  taken  the  same  step  with  reference  to  the  second  half 
of  his  original  type  of  inference,  in  the  selection  of  a  universal  to  explain 
a  given  situation.  He  admits  this  to  be  often  a  most  arduous  intellectual 
process,  but  refuses — though  not  always  consistently — to  grant  it  the 
status  of  inference,^  on  the  ground  that  it  is  invention,  and  “invention 
cannot  be  reduced  to  rule.”  These  two  phases  of  inference  remain  to 
be  considered  in  the  next  two  sections. 

*  148^-49^,  155c,  208a.  *  iS4^f“55^-  ^  208-9. 


CHAPTER  V 

INFERENCE  AS  PROOF  OF  PROPOSITIONS 

The  distinction  just  noted  between  the  establishment  and  the  selec¬ 
tion  of  a  universal  proposition  enables  Mill  to  pass  over  to  a  second  con¬ 
ception  of  inference.  Before  examining  the  latter  it  will  be  well  to  note 
again  the  exact  point  of  the  transition.  Mill  has  established,  he  believes, 
the  general  character  of  inference  as  a  passage  from  certain  particular 
facts  to  certain  others.  But  if  these  certain  facts  justify  the  conclusion 
about  any  others  at  all,  they  justify  the  conclusion  about  any  others 
whatever  of  the  same  description.  Accordingly  from  premises  which 
justify  any  conclusion  we  can  always  draw  a  general  conclusion.  The 
problem  of  application,  the  problem,  namely,  whether  the  later  facts  are 
of  the  same  description,  or  of  what  description  they  are,  is  thrown  out 
as  irrelevant  to  inference,  because  it  cannot  be  reduced  to  rule;  it  is 
apparently  too  psychological.  This  leaves  for  inference  only  the  prob¬ 
lem  of  drawing  the  general  proposition  from  the  data,  the  problem  of 
induction. 

But  this  is  not  all.  There  is  a  still  further  limitation  in  this  concep¬ 
tion  of  inference  as  induction.  It  is  not  the  discovery  of  general  propo¬ 
sitions  but  their  proof  with  which  he  concerns  himself.  The  type  of 
question  which  his  machinery  of  induction  is  designed  to  solve  is  not, 
‘‘What  proposition  is  true?”  but  rather,  “Is  a  given  proposition  true?” 
Mill  set  out,  it  is  true,  with  the  intention  of  providing  a  logic  of  discovery,^ 
of  the  process  of  advancing  from  known  truths  to  unknown.^  Logic  is 
to  investigate  the  “pursuit  of  truth,”^  of  “how  we  come  by  that  portion 
of  our  knowledge  (much  the  greater  portion)  which  is  not  intuitive.  ”4 
But  he  makes  this  synonymous  with  “estimation  of  evidence,”^  and  falls 
back  at  once  into  a  formal  logic  of  proof. ^  “Our  object,”  he  says,  “will 
be  ....  to  ...  .  frame  a  set  of  rules  or  canons  for  testing  the  suffi¬ 
ciency  of  any  given  evidence  to  prove  any  given  proposition.  ”7 

Why  did  Milks  conception  of  inference  become  so  completely  that  of 
proof  ?  There  were  probably  two  reasons,  both  suggested  in  the  words 
just  quoted.  The  first  is  extrinsic  to  the  character  of  his  theory,  and  is 
due  to  his  desire  to  provide,  in  a  logic  of  induction,  a  set  of  “rules  and 

^  208a.  3  iqJ.  S  235. 

^  23&.  4  27&,  51a.  6  121(1,  2lh,  45(Z,  886,  20M.  7  23c. 

34 


INFERENCE  AS  PROOF  OF  PROPOSITIONS 


35 


canons”  that  would  emulate  those  of  the  formal  deductive  logic  in  which 
his  father  had  given  him  so  rigid  a  training;  Mill  certainly  took  great 
satisfaction  in  the  formulation  of  his  “inductive  methods.”^  The  other 
reason  is  intrinsic  to  the  theory  itself,  which  drove  him  back  to  “given 
evidence”  for  “given  propositions.”  Facts  for  Mill  are  always  given , 
whether  subjective  facts  of  immediate  consciousness  or  objective  facts 
of  the  system  of  nature.  The  proposition  is  likewise  given,  for  it  is  the 
universal  meaning  of  the  facts,  to  be  read  off  from  them  as  they  come 
together. 

The  universal  propositions  the  inductive  proof  of  which  constitutes 
inference  are  of  various  kinds.  They  include  the  statement,  for  example, 
of  spatial  and  numerical  relations.^  It  would  be  interesting  to  trace 
out  the  relation  of  inference  to  matter-of-fact  in  these,  and  to  inquire 
whether  it  is  consistent  with  Mill’s  general  treatment  of  induction.  That 
treatment,  however,  is  based  almost  entirely  on  the  establishment  of 
causal  relations, 3  and  the  present  criticism  of  Mill  must  be  limited  to  this 
field. 

The  character  of  induction  as  proof  is  rooted  in  Mill’s  realistic  scheme 
of  nature,  (i)  Nature  consists,  as  we  saw,  of  certain  things,  having 
certain  attributes  and  in  certain  collocations.  (2)  Every  change  takes 
place  according  to  a  uniform  law  of  succession,  each  event  following  and 
preceding  certain  other  events  according  to  such  a  causal  law.  (3)  Nature 
is  a  single  system  of  such  things  and  events.  This  whole  system  of  nature 
is  conceived  as  definitely  determined  and  proceeding  on  its  way  inde¬ 
pendently  of  US.4  To  be  sure,  we  are  not  acquainted  with  all  of  it,  but 
we  are  certain  that  it  is  all  of  this  character.  When  we  wish  to  know 
what  the  laws  of  sequence  in  nature  are  we  must  watch  the  shuffle  of 
facts  and  observe  which  go  together.  Our  experiments  may  vary  the 
shuffle,  but  the  principle  of  noting  the  shuffle  is  the  same.  The  very 
possibility  of  identifying  the  facts  in  the  shuffle  rests  upon  the  universal 
character  of  their  attributes,  and  the  assertion  of  the  accompaniment  of 
certain  attributes  is  a  general  proposition.  It  would  seem,  then,  that 
discovery  and  proof  are  essentially  identical.  We  find  accompaniment 
of  attributes  so  far  as,  within  the  field  of  our  observation,  there  is  accom¬ 
paniment  of  attributes.  The  facts  that  teach  us  the  law  prove  the  law. 

^  Mill  hoped  that  his  Logic  might  serve  as  a  Novum  Organum  of  real  practical 
value.  See  Logic,  579-80;  Autobiography,  226.  Cf.  Joseph,  Introduction  to  Logic,  342 . 

^  234^. 

3  2zsb-d,  236c. 

4  These  are  the  “three  analogies”  in  Mill,  as  noted  above. 


36  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILUS  LOGIC 


This  would  seem  to  be  a  fair  statement  of  the  general  conception 
of  proof  which  underlies  Mill’s  theory  of  induction.  But  the  matter  is 
not  so  simple  as  it  seems.  There  are  grave  difficulties  raised  by  it. 
Partially  recognized  by  Mill,  they  compel  him  to  introduce  deviations 
in  the  procedure  of  induction.  Fully  faced,  they  would  lead  to  a  recon¬ 
struction  of  its  underlying  principles.  Three  such  difficulties  require 
our  consideration: 

First,  the  inductive  methods  are  all  recognized  by  Mill  to  be  so  many 
means  of  elimination.^  But  elimination  is  not  proof;  it  is  disproof. 
Elimination  must  obviously  operate  upon  alternatives;  and  the  very 
point  of  the  elimination  is  that  neither  of  the  alternatives  is  proved  till 
at  least  one  other  is  disproved.  There  must  be  a  tentative  consideration 
of  various  apparent  uniformities  in  order  that  the  methods  shall  have 
play  in  the  rejection  of  those  which  are  actually  non-uniformities.^ 

Mill  might  be  supposed  to  answer  that  this  is  just  what  nature  does 
for  us.  Out  of  the  chaos  of  sequences,  some  accidental  and  some  uni¬ 
form,  the  accidental  are  eliminated  by  the  circumstance  that  they  do 
not  recur,  which  is  the  principle  of  the  methods,  ignoring  for  convenience 
their  finer  complications.  But  there  is  no  elimination  whatever  in  nature. 
The  facts  are  all  there,  and  they  stay  there.  Nature  is  wholly  careless 
whether  she  presents  uniformities  or  non-uniformities.  It  is  the  reflect¬ 
ive  attack  upon  nature  that  uses  the  methods,  and  their  eliminative 
procedure  is  exercised  upon  the  tentative  efforts  to  interpret  the  facts; 
that  is,  to  find  out  what  the  facts  really  are.  Mill’s  proofs  are  disproofs: 
disproofs  of  propositions  not  given  ready-made  by  the  facts  that  furnish 
the  disproofs. 

Where,  then,  do  the  propositions  come  from?  Whence  arise  the 
assertions  about  the  facts,  the  interpretations  of  fact,  which  are  then 
proved  or  disproved?  To  ask  such  a  question,  it  must  be  replied,  is 
very  likely  to  imply  just  Mill’s  misconception.  We  have  no  system  of 
facts,  complete  and  ready-made,  with  which  to  check  up  our  interpreta¬ 
tions  for  elimination.  There  is  a  constant  interplay  between  fact  and 
interpretation,  each  reconstituting  the  other.  The  only  facts  we  have 
are  the  facts  as  we  have  successfully  interpreted  them,  and  our  interpre¬ 
tations  always  arise  as  tentative  statements  of  the  facts.  Again,  the 
operation  of  proof  and  disproof  is  strictly  correlative  with  the  presenta¬ 
tion  of  propositions  to  be  tested  out;  neither  can  be  supposed  without  at 
least  a  tentative  form  of  the  other.  Nature  no  more  offers  a  series  of 

^  278J,  279e-8oa,  281a,  310&. 

=  I.e.,  which  are  not  unconditionally  invariable. 


INFERENCE  AS  PROOF  OF  PROPOSITIONS 


37 


prepared  ‘‘evidences”  ready  to  apply  to  any  given  proposition  than  she 
provides  the  propositions  ready-made.  Facts  are  not  all  in  nature, 
inferences  all  in  us.  Facts  likewise  grow  in  the  soil  of  inquiry,  and  are 
the  fruits  quite  as  much  as  the  roots  of  our  inferential  control  of  nature. 

The  second  difficulty  is  due  to  the  impossibility  of  determining  the 
limits  of  a  fact  out  of  relation  to  the  character  of  the  inquiry  about  the 
fact  and  the  proposed  interpretation  of  the  fact.  It  is  the  difficulty,  in 
any  inquiry  regarding  cause  and  effect,  of  setting  the  limits  of  an 
event.^  Mill  is  already  feeling  this  difficulty  when  he  draws  his  distinc¬ 
tion  between  causation  as  practically  and  philosophically  understood.^ 
Causation,  according  to  his  own  program,  is  to  be  understood  in  the  latter 
way;  that,  he  holds,  is  the  conception  underlying  genuinely  scientific 
inference,  and  is  based  on  the  facts  of  nature  as  they  really  are.  For 
practical  purposes,  indeed,  we  are  content  to  note  a  selection  of  the 
conditions  of  an  event  and  to  call  them  the  cause,  or  to  take  two  events 
whose  succession  is  more  or  less  mediate  and  call  them  cause  and  effect, 
without  taking  account  of  all  the  possible  counteracting  conditions  that 
might  have  intervened.  But  in  philosophical  strictness  we  should  do 
neither  the  one  thing  nor  the  other.  Philosophically,  causation  must 
admit  no  omissions  and  no  loopholes.^  Now,  having  set  this  up  as  a 
demand,  what  Mill  actually  does  in  various  illustrations  is  to  contrast 
more  nearly  philosophical  with  less  nearly  philosophical  statements  of 
concrete  cases  of  causation,  but  all  his  illustrations  are  statements  of 
approximation  only;  they  never  exhibit  a  single  case  of  causation  in 
the  full  “philosophical”  sense.  And  they  do  not  because  they  cannot. 
« 

^  The  best  discussion  of  this  difficulty  seen  by  the  writer,  though  without  special 
reference  to  Mill,  is  in  Sidgwick,  The  Process  of  Argument,  chaps,  x  and  xi.  A  few 
sentences  must  be  quoted.  “  The  question  where  does  an  occurrence  end  and  ‘  another  ’ 
begin  is  unanswerable  except  by  an  artificial  distinction  drawn  to  suit  our  practical  pur¬ 
poses.”  “This  kind  of  analysis  may  be  carried  much  farther.  Given  any  two  steps 
in  the  series,  we  know  that  some  occurrence  comes  between  them,  however  short  the 
interval,  and  that  this  intermediate  occurrence  ....  has  just  as  much  right  to  be 
classed  as  belonging  to  one  end  of  the  chain  as  to  the  other.  It  is  not  properly  a  chain, 
in  fact,  but  a  stream,  or  a  continuous  growth  like  that  between  bud  and  flower.” 
“No  one  seriously  denies  that  the  links  are  there,  but  our  practical  needs  do  not  always 
compel  us  to  explore  them.”  “The  separation  into  Cause  and  Effect  is  done  for  a 
purpose,  and  its  value  depends  on  its  serving  that  purpose.  Whenever  a  hitch  occurs 
we  are  bound  to  look  more  closely  into  the  details  of  the  connection.”  “The  line  we 
draw  between  antecedent  and  consequent  is  an  artificial  one;  they  are  more  or  less 
ill-defined  parts  of  a  whole  which  it  suits  us  to  pull  asunder.” 

2  240c,  241a. 

3  Logic,  Book  III,  chapter  v  as  a  whole. 


38  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


For  if  Mill  were  to  be  pressed  on  the  point,  he  would  find  himself 
completely  locked  in  by  the  Kantian  antinomies.  The  continuity  of 
time  and  space  renders  all  change  continuous,  and  there  is  nothing  in 
the  facts  taken  as  they  merely  “are” — assuming  they  could  be  so  taken 
— that  would  ever  indicate  the  limits  of  an  event,  either  serially  or  in 
section.  The  continuity  of  all  process  in  space  and  time,  and  perhaps 
also  in  qualitative  degree,  renders  the  singling  out  of  any  “event”  pos¬ 
sible  only  when  relevant  to  a  purpose.  Mill  admits  this  for  “practical” 
causation,  but  he  has  to  assume  it  covertly  for  all  causation.^ 

The  point  may  be  restated  thus :  Mill  reduces  the  uniformity  of  the 
world  to  a  network  of  particular  uniformities  of  sequence  between  a 
group  of  antecedent  phenomena  and  one  consequent  phenomenon.  This 
is  a  correction  of  the  common,  crude  view  (in  terms  of  which,  however. 
Mill  often  speaks)  that  every  consequent  is  the  result  of  some  one  ante¬ 
cedent,  each  phenomenon  being  taken  as  though  an  obviously  definite 
unit.  But  the  parts  of  the  world  and  their  properties  are  more  closely 
intertwined  than  we  crudely  suppose.  So  Mill  corrects  this  view  in  two 
respects:  First,  he  insists  that  in  the  cause  we  should  enumerate  all  the 
conditioning  antecedents;  that  is,  all  the  antecedents  whose  combina¬ 
tion  is  required  that  the  effect  may  follow.  All  the  conditions,  positive 
and  negative,  are  absorbed  into  the  cause.  Secondly,  he  insists  upon 
the  immediate  succession  of  antecedents  and  consequent.  There  must 
be  no  intermediate  steps  between.  The  reason  of  this  is  that  there  may 
be  unsuspected  conditioning  factors,  and  with  the  longer  interval  and 
the  more  opportunity  we  give  unsuspected  factors  to  operate  the  more 
likely  it  is  that  the  expected  sequence  will  not  hold.  A  plot  which  is  to 
culminate  in  a  year  is  more  liable  to  be  frustrated  than  one  which  is  to 
culminate  in  a  day.  Mill,  it  is  true,  does  not  correct  the  popular  idea 
of  effect  as  he  does  that  of  cause.  He  still  selects  some  one  consequent 
which  he  calls  the  effect,  and  thus  gives  room  for  the  plurality  of  causes.^ 
Theoretically  this  is  an  inconsistency.  An  effect  is  just  as  complex  as  a 
cause,  and  if  we  enumerated  all  its  elements  the  plurality  of  causes  would 
be  impossible.  Practically,  of  course.  Mill  is  quite  right;  there  would 

^  The  supposition  of  “points’’  and  “instants”  is  a  mathematical  refinement 
intended  to  provide  a  union  of  continuity  and  discreteness  by  bringing  space  and 
time  into  correspondence  with  the  filled  number  system.  But  when  we  try  to  apply 
the  formulae  based  on  this  supposition,  the  question  of  what  points  and  instants  to 
start  with  raises  exactly  Mill’s  “practical”  problem  over  again,  and  cannot  be  met 
out  of  relation  to  a  purpose  which  is  dealing  with  the  system  of  points  and  instants. 

2  See  an  acute  discussion  of  plurality  of  causes  in  Hobhouse,  Theory  of  Knowledge, 
457-62. 


INFERENCE  AS  PROOF  OF  PROPOSITIONS 


39 


usually  be  no  gain  in  looking  for  all  the  elements  in  the  effect.  We  are 
not  usually  so  interested  in  the  reasons  of  things  as  in  how  to  bring  about 
a  particular  result.  But  philosophically  speaking,  as  Mill  would  say, 
we  have  a  right  to  hold  him  to  just  as  wide  an  extension  of  the  effect  as 
of  the  cause.  Now  when  we  try  to  make  this  view  of  causal  sequence 
theoretically  correct,  how  are  we  to  decide  which  of  the  antecedents  and 
consequents  are  relevant  and  which  are  not  ?  A  finite  mind  can  never 
grasp  all  the  antecedents.  Unsuspected  factors  constantly  enter,  and 
may  at  any  time  prove  important.  Those  which  we  commonly  reject 
because  too  trivial  or  remote  have  an  influence  upon  the  effect  which 
though  at  first  perhaps  infinitesimal  may  in  time  become  vast.  Theo¬ 
retically,  therefore,  we  should  enumerate  all  the  antecedents  and  conse¬ 
quents  in  the  universe.  Could  we  do  this,  we  might  say  with  confidence 
that  were  this  cause  ever  repeated  its  effect  would  be  repeated,  and  this 
without  reference  to  the  immediateness  or  remoteness  of  the  cause  and 
effect.  This  is  the  uniformity  of  sequence  carried  in  one  direction  to  its 
theoretic  limit.  Within  this  limit  there  must  be  uncertainty  and  imper¬ 
fection  in  our  grasp  of  causal  laws.  But  this  limit  if  theoretically  perfect 
is  obviously  useless.  Again,  uniformity  of  sequence  might  be  carried 
to  theoretic  perfection  in  another  way.  If  the  antecedents,  as  we  have 
seen,  are  perfectly  known,  the  certainty  of  the  sequence  will  be  absolute, 
no  matter  how  great  the  interval  between  antecedents  and  consequents; 
there  need  be  no  time  limit.  The  reverse  is  true,  that  if  the  antecedents 
are  not  completely  known  the  probability  of  the  sequence  is  less  as  the 
interval  between  the  antecedents  and  consequents  is  greater.  If,  how¬ 
ever,  we  bring  them  into  relatively  close  proximity  the  probability  of 
sequence  becomes  relatively  great.  The  limit  is  reached  when  the  time 
interval  has  become  infinitesimal.  We  have  then  a  mere  tendency  in  the 
antecedents  which  awaits  no  interval  in  which  it  might  be  interfered 
with,  and  is  therefore  perfectly  certain  however  small  we  make  the  group 
of  antecedents,  down  to  the  infinitesimal  limit.  This  result,  again,  is 
theoretically  perfect  but  practically  useless.  Mill  is  locked  up  within 
the  dilemma  of  a  construction  of  causation  which  is  either  theoretically 
incorrect  or  practically  of  no  avail.* 

Indeed,  this  is  an  underestimate  of  the  difficulty.  We  cannot  call 
the  limiting  forms  of  the  causal  scheme  even  theoretically  correct;  they 
are  entirely  meaningless.  It  must  be  remembered  that  the  problem  of 
causation  is  to  find  uniform  sequences,  and  it  will  be  no  solution  simply 

*  Venn,  Empirical  Logic ^  47-7 gives  an  excellent  analysis  of  the  antinomy  of 
causation  in  Mill. 


40 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


to  eliminate  the  problem.  If  now  the  absolute  certainty  of  a  sequence 
is  assured  by  screwing  the  antecedent  and  consequent  so  close  together 
that  no  interval  is  left  in  which  the  sequence  might  be  counteracted,  the 
time  relation  has  disappeared,  and  this  destroys  the  sequence  itself  whose 
certainty  it  was  sought  to  safeguard.  If  in  the  other  direction  the  whole 
universe  is  included  in  cause  and  effect,  the  time  limit  spreads  out  to 
infinity,  the  history  of  the  universe  becomes  a  single  event,  and  sequence 
is  once  more  destroyed.  Theoretically  considered,  then.  Mill’s  view  of 
nature  as  a  set  of  given  facts  in  causal  relation  breaks  up  into  antinomies 
when  pressed  in  either  direction.  We  are  compelled  to  return,  as  Mill 
did  in  his  actual  examples,  from  the  philosophical  to  the  practical  view 
of  causation.  But  to  do  so  requires  that  we  have  a  criterion  of  what 
shall  be  taken  as  a  single  fact,  and  such  a  criterion  is  not  provided  in  the 
facts  themselves  in  their  mere  given  aspect.  In  causation  practically 
considered  such  a  criterion  is  provided;  it  is  found  in  the  personal  rela¬ 
tion  of  the  inquirer  to  the  situation.  As  this  criterion  is  relative  to  the 
inquirer.  Mill  rejected  it  as  practical,  and  the  conception  of  causation 
in  which  it  operates  as  unscientific.  But  the  conception  of  causation 
which  aims  to  be  free  from  this  defect  collapses  for  lack  of  such  a 
criterion.  Once  more  it  is  seen  that  there  is  no  place  for  inference  in  a 
world  of  pure  fact. 

This  suggests  the  third  difficulty,  that  proof,  as  proof,  turns  out  to 
be  merely  a  relation  within  given  content,  as  was  pointed  out  above. 
It  is  no  longer  a  means  of  passing  from  one  state  of  knowledge  to  another, 
such  a  function  appearing  irrelevant  to  its  character  as  “given  evidence” 
of  a  “given  proposition,”  but  it  is  now  a  relation  within  the  content  of 
a  single  state  of  knowledge.  We  have  already  seen  how  any  inference, 
viewed  ex  post  facto,  must  be  as  circular  as  the  syllogism.  This  circularity 
centers  in  the  very  nature  of  mere  proof,  its  evidential  character  lying  as 
a  fixed  relation  within  its  own  content.^ 

How  tautologous,  for  example,  are  Mill’s  proofs  of  causal  laws.  He 
takes  his  instances,  already  selected  as  relevant,  orders  them  under  the 
formulae  of  the  methods,  and  points  to  them  for  the  proof.  It  is  there, 
in  them,  as  they  stand.  The  evidential  relation  lies  within  a  content 
assumed  to  be  already  completely  determined. 

^  “While  the  process  of  thought  is  still  active,  the  logician  ....  has  nothing  to 
say  to  it;  for  his  vulturine  ‘analysis’  never  ventures  to  attack  a  living  thought.  He 
appears  upon  the  scene  when  the  thinking  is  defunct  and  over . ‘Logical  analy¬ 

sis’  first  destroys  the  real  connections  between  thoughts,  and  then  feigns  false  ones” 
(Schiller,  Formal  Logic,  197-98). 


INFERENCE  AS  PROOF  OF  PROPOSITIONS 


41 


Proof  in  this  static  sense  resembles  a  map  by  which  one  may  and 
often  does  represent  the  journey  one  has  pursued.  In  the  map,  as  in 
the  proof,  the  actual  movement  or  passage  of  the  journey  is  lost,  and 
that  which  was  discovered  in  the  course  of  the  journey  is  represented 
simultaneously  with  the  starting-point.  Experience  cannot  be  repro¬ 
duced  in  a  formula.  It  can  be  represented,  but  the  adequacy  of  such 
representation  is  always  relative  to  its  purpose.  Moreover,  in  the  proof 
as  on  the  map  one  may  indicate  a  route  that  has  never  been  actually 
followed.  One  may  even  amuse  one’s  self  by  constructing  endless  maps 
and  proofs  without  having  journeyed  or  reasoned  at  all.  And  just  as 
the  route  when  projected  on  the  map  lets  slip  the  real  story  of  the 
journey,  so  proof  fails  to  embody  the  actual  process  of  inference,  the 
account  of  which  in  the  end  must  necessarily  be  given  as  a  part  of  some 
one’s  personal  biography.^  The  results  of  a  scientific  discovery  are 
ordinarily  our  sole  concern;  having  set  them  out  in  systematic  relations 
with  our  other  knowledge,  we  call  this  their  evidence.  But  if  we  do 
undertake  to  give  an  account  of  how  the  discovery  was  made,  we  are 
drawn  back  to  its  setting  in  the  life-story  of  the  scientist.  Our  systema¬ 
tized  “proof”  of  the  discovery  does  not  reproduce  either  the  problem  or 
the  solution  as  these  originally  appeared  to  the  discoverer.  Inference 
as  discovery  will  be  further  considered  below. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  illustrate  this  point  in  a  different  field. 
Consider  the  case  of  a  debater,  whose  mind  is  definitely  made  up  on  the 
main  question,  but  searching  for  arguments  with  which  to  convince  his 
hearers.  This  man  certainly  has  a  problem  before  his  mind,  but  it  is 
not  the  problem  expressed  by  the  question  in  debate.  It  is  the  problem 
of  selection  of  materials  that  shall  stand  in  certain  relations  to  other 
materials.  This  relation  may,  if  you  please,  be  called  evidential.  It  is 
intended  to  operate  in  an  inferential  process  in  the  hearer’s  mind.  But 
to  the  debater’s  own  mind""  that  so-called  evidential  relation  does  not 
operate  inferentially,  and  the  selection  of  evidential  materials  is  no  more 
inference  for  him,  as  regards  the  question  in  debate,  than  would  be  the 
selection  of  rhyming  words  or  the  parts  of  a  puzzle  picture.  Proof,  then, 
may  mean  two  different  things.  It  may  mean  either  the  reconstruction 
of  content  by  which  an  actual  inquiry  is  met,  or  a  relation  within  the 

1  In  the  last  analysis  is  not  the  historical  more  fundamental  than  the  scientific 
point  of  view?  This  is  perhaps  the  ultimate  issue  between  instrumentalism  and 
intellectualism. 

2  And  to  the  hearer’s  mind  when  the  debate  is  over  and  he  reviews  the  argument 
as  a  whole. 


42 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILVS  LOGIC 


content  as  it  is  looked  back  on  by  the  inquirer  after  the  reconstruction, 
or  as  it  is  supposed  to  apply  to  the  problem  of  some  other  inquirer. 
Under  the  first  alternative  proof  is  evidentially  operative  in  an  actual 
inference;  under  the  second  alternative  it  is  not.  The  latter  is  ‘Tormal  ” 
proof. 

Proof  in  the  latter  sense  may  reach  any  degree  of  detachment  from 
actual  inference.  The  content,  and  the  so-called  inferential  relations 
within  it,  may  become  indefinitely  abstract  and  schematic.  Such  is  the 
case,  for  example,  in  the  field  of  mathematics  and  of  mathematical  logic. 
The  inquirer  indeed  does  form  a  succession  of  inferences  about  the  con¬ 
tent  as  he  is  building  it  up,  but  the  relations  of  ‘implication”  exhibited 
in  the  content  after  it  is  built  up  are  not  inferences  at  all  in  the  same  sense; 
or  perhaps  in  any  proper  sense.^ 

As  the  difficulty  presents  itself  in  Mill,  it  seems  that  the  facts  must 
already  have  been  determined  before  proof  appears,  and  the  proof  is  of 
the  nature  of  an  ex  post  facto  reading  of  the  facts  after  the  real  inference 
has  been  made.  This  view  of  proof  leaves  untouched  the  question  of 
how  the  facts  were  determined.  This  question  receives  partial  considera¬ 
tion  under  Mill’s  treatment  of  hypothesis,  to  which  we  now  tiirn. 

^  In  criticizing  this  sentence  of  Adamson,  “No  logical  method  can  be  developed 
save  from  a  most  definite  conception  of  the  essential  nature  and  modus  operandi  of 
thinking,”  Professor  Marvin  says,  “To  which  the  reply  can  in  the  present  day  be  given: 
‘But  it  has  been  done,  such  a  symbolic  logic  actually  obtains’”  {Journal  of  Phil.,  etc., 
May  8,  1913,  p.  275).  Even  in  the  present  day  the  claim  of  symbolic  logic  to  be 
independent  of  the  nature  and  method  of  thinking  might  be  challenged.  Its  whole 
scheme  of  implicational  relations  is  only  one  stage  in  the  development  of  an  instru¬ 
ment  for  the  use  of  actual  thinking. 


CHAPTER  VI 
INFERENCE  AS  DISCOVERY 

In  his  formulation  of  the  inductive  methods,  Mill  set  out  to  describe 
the  process  by  which  general  propositions  are  established.  As  the  induc¬ 
tive  methods  are  merely  means  of  elimination  among  alternative  propo¬ 
sitions,  the  outcome  is  to  reduce  inference  to  disproof.  But  Mill  cannot 
permanently  lay  aside  as  merely  psychological  the  question  of  how  we 
get  the  alternative  propositions  upon  which  disproof  is  to  operate.  He 
is  forced  to  acknowledge  a  place  in  inference  for  the  formation  of  hypoth¬ 
eses.  Inference  as  discovery  inevitably  involves  a  hypothetical  approach 
to  the  conclusion;  and  this  may  fairly  be  called  Mill’s  third  conception 
of  inference.  In  answer  to  the  question  where  we  get  the  propositions 
to  be  established,  we  must  say  that  they  come  as  hypotheses. 

The  official  place  of  hypothesis  in  Mill’s  doctrine  of  inference  is  two¬ 
fold.^  First,  it  appears  as  a  means  of  extending  the  “method  of  deduc¬ 
tion,”  by  substituting  a  supposed  proposition  where  no  suitable  one  is 
known,  and  testing  it  by  the  consequences  drawn  from  it.^  Secondly,  it 
appears  in  several  of  the  processes  subsidiary  to  induction,  processes  that 
have  to  be  performed  before  induction  is  ready  to  operate.  At  neither 
point  is  the  process  of  forming  hypotheses  given  a  central,  constitutive 
part  in  inference.  Mill  can  still  speak  of  “perfect  induction  without  any 
mixture  of  hypothesis,”^  or  of  a  “theory”  that  has  in  it  “nothing,  strictly 
speaking,  hypothetical. ’’^ 

At  one  point  or  another  of  his  discussion,  indeed.  Mill  is  obliged  to 
acknowledge  a  hypothetical  factor  at  every  step  of  inference.  These 
admissions  appear  mainly  in  the  sections  that  deal  with  “subsidiary” 
operations,  and  the  most  significant  of  them  appear  in  passages  added, 
under  stress  of  controversy,  in  the  later  editions  of  his  work.  They  do 
not  lead  Mill  to  reconstruct  the  non-hypothetical  character  of  his  view 
of  inference  and  its  relation  to  fact.  But  they  do  allow  a  tentative 
factor  through  the  whole  process  of  inference  as  it  is  in  operation.  Con¬ 
sider,  for  example,  his  treatment  of  analogy .s  Analogy  is  recognized  as 
hypothetical;  but  all  inference  is  analogical  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  taking  of 

*  On  Mill’s  doctrine  of  hypothesis  see  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory,  160-68. 

2  350&,  c.  “  3606. 

3  3596.  ®  Book  III,  chap.  xx. 


43 


44  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 

one  situation  to  be  like  another.  Again,  abstraction  or  “  the  formation 
of  concepts”^  is  but  another  name  of  hypothesis.  Mill  shows  with 
admirable  clearness  that  the  mere  naming  of  a  fact  implies  that  one  has 
already  interpreted  it  in  terms  of  other  experiences,  though  apparently 
he  had  not  thought  of  this  when  he  based  inductive  proof  on  ‘‘cases.” 
“  We  cannot  describe  a  fact  without  implying  more  than  the  fact.”  “An 
observation  cannot  be  spoken  of  in  language  at  all  without  declaring 
more  than  that  one  observation;  without  assimilating  it  to  other  phe¬ 
nomena  already  observed  and  classified.”^  Mill  gives  some  striking 
descriptions  of  the  method  by  which  one  meets  actual  problems,  as  in 
“the  search  for  a  lost  object,”^  or  the  unraveling  of  “the  true  history  of 
any  occurrence  from  the  involved  statements  of  one  or  of  many  wit¬ 
nesses.”  “He  extemporizes,  from  a  few  of  the  particulars,  a  first  rude 
theory  of  the  mode  in  which  the  facts  took  place,  and  then  looks  at  the 
other  statements  one  by  one,  to  try  whether  they  can  be  reconciled  with 
that  provisional  theory,  or  what  alterations  or  additions  it  requires  to 
make  it  square  with  them.  In  this  way  ....  we  arrive,  by  means 
of  hypotheses,  at  conclusions  not  hypothetical.  ”4 

Of  special  interest  are  Mill’s  admissions  that  any  experiment — and 
the  inductive  methods  are  all  essentially  formulae  of  experimentation — 
receives  its  very  point  from  the  hypothesis  it  is  to  test.  “All  experi¬ 
mental  inquiry  assumes  provisionally  some  theory  or  hypothesis,  which 
is  to  be  finally  held  true  or  not,  according  as  the  experiments  decide.” 

“The  theory  itself  preceded  the  proof  of  its  truth . It  had  to  be 

conceived  before  it  could  be  proved . All  the  true  theories  in  the 

sciences  ....  began  by  being  assumed.’’^  “Nearly  everything  which 
is  now  theory  was  once  hypothesis.  Even  in  purely  experimental  science 
some  inducement  is  necessary  for  trying  one  experiment  rather  than 
another.”^  This  conflicts  with  the  statement  assigning  the  place  of 
hypotheses  in  Mill’s  original  scheme,  that  they  “are  invented  to  enable 
the  Deductive  Method  to  be  applied  earlier  to  phenomena  ”;7  for  it  is 
only  on  the  pronipting  of  hypotheses  that  the  deductive  or  any  other 
method  is  ever  applied  at  all.  Without  hypothesis  Mill’s  own  methods 
would  be  open  to  the  strictures  he  brings  against  Bacon’s  step-by-step 
method.^  His  attempt  to  work  out  a  set  of  inductive  methods  as  self- 
contained  and  non- tentative  in  their  “proof”  as  the  syllogism  had 
seemed  to  be  has  broken  down. 

^  Book  IV,  chap.  ii.  •  ^  45  2a,  b.  3  4636. 

4  354.  The  final  words,  “conclusions  not  hypothetical,”  could  be  accepted  only 
subject  to  the  interpretation  given  below,  that  they  differ  only  in  degree  and  function. 

s  i846-85a.  ^  353C.  ’  35ob.  ®  603C-04&  and  note. 


INFERENCE  AS  DISCOVERY 


45 


But  however  wide  a  scope  Mill  is  finally  compelled  to  grant  to  the 
operation  of  hypothesis,  he  does  not  adequately  appreciate  the  organic 
interrelation  of  hypothesis  and  fact.  Indeed,  he  allows  hypothesis  too 
much  scope.  “An  hypothesis  being  a  mere  supposition,  there  are  no 
other  limits  to  hypothesis  than  those  of  the  human  imagination;  we 
may,  if  we  please,  imagine,  by  way  of  accounting  for  an  effect,  some 
cause  of  a  kind  utterly  unknown,  and  acting  according  to  a  law  altogether 
fictitious.”^  This  extreme  statement,  it  is  true,  receives  some  limita¬ 
tion  later  on;  but  without  sufficiently  clear  recognition  of  the  principle 
that  every  genuine  hypothesis  makes  a  tentative  claim  to  he  fact.  Mere  play 
of  the  imagination  may  have  aesthetic  or  other  values;  but  only  as  a 
hypothesis  is  a  genuine  and  controlled  effort  to  grasp  the  facts,  and 
because  it  is  that,  does  it  hold  any  place  as  a  tentative  inference.  There 
is  an  organic  interrelation  between  hypothesis  and  fact.  In  actual 
inference  the  two  are  not  held  over  against  each  other.  Hypotheses  are 
simply  our  best  grasp  of  the  facts — tentative,  but  genuinely  objective — 
at  any  one  stage  of  the  proceeding.  Facts  are  hypotheses  that  no  longer 
require  a  tentative  attitude,  but  have  obtained  acceptance.  Between 
the  two  there  is  progressive  interaction,  and  this  interaction  constitutes 
inference. 

Hypotheses,  according  to  Mill,  are  of  two  kinds,"*  in  one  of  which  the 
existence  of  the  cause  is  acknowledged  but  its  law  of  operation  is  sup¬ 
posed;  in  the  other  the  law  is  acknowledged  and  the  cause  supposed. 
Of  this  second  kind  there  are  again  two  varieties :  the  hypothetical  cause 
may  be  a  supposed  collocation  of  agents  of  a  known  kind^  or  a  supposed 
agent  of  an  unknown  kind.  The  last  variety,  however,  must  either  be 
the  supposition  of  a  law,  in  the  form  of  certain  properties  of  the  agent, 
and  so  fall  under  the  first  head,  or  it  collapses  into  a  merely  verbal  form, 
without  even  a  tentative  claim  to  be  a  fact.^  The  other  two  correspond 
to  the  two  great  types  of  problem,  in  which  either  the  major  or  the  minor 
premise  is  in  question;  for  the  difficulty  in  a  situation  that  needs  clear¬ 
ing  up  may  lie  primarily  in  the  need  either  of  constructing  or  of  selecting 
a  concept,  the  concept  standing  for  the  mode  of  interpretation  which  we 
carry  over  from  one  experience  to  another.  While  Mill’s  classification 
of  hypotheses  and  his  selection  of  examples  are  somewhat  confused  in 
detail,  it  is  at  least  clear  that  hypothesis  has  its  place  in  the  clearing  up 
of  any  problematic  situation;  it  is  not  limited  to  the  discovery  of  uni¬ 
versal  propositions  only. 

*  349c?.  Cf.  Hobhouse,  Theory  of  Knowledge,  418. 

2  349c?.  ^  2>S9h-(>0‘ 

4  35S«-S9^^-  Cf.  351^^-53^- 


46  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


However  broad  their  service  in  leading  over  from  some  facts  to  others, 
in  their  inner  character  they  seem  for  Mill  to  be  made  of  a  different  sort 
of  stuff  from  the  facts  which  they  are  intended  to  explain  or  by  which 
they  are  tested.  But  is  not  this  to  misunderstand  the  character  of  these 
facts  ?  On  the  one  hand,  if  we  had  the  facts  at  the  start  there  would  be 
no  occasion  for  any  hypothesis  and  none  would  arise.  It  is  because  in 
some  respect  the  “facts”  have  failed  us  that  we  are  compelled  to  attempt 
a  reconstruction,  and  our  reconstruction  at  any  stage  is  the  nearest 
available  approach  to  the  facts.  If  not  fact,  the  hypothesis  is  the  most 
active  possible  candidate  for  that  title.  When  a  hypothesis  becomes 
fact,  it  does  not  change  its  inner  nature;  it  simply  does  its  work  so  well 
that  it  satisfies.^  It  is  idle,  therefore,  to  treat  the  facts  as  already  given, 
and  the  hypothesis  as  a  structure  of  our  own  somehow  additional  to  the 
facts;  for  we  get  hold  of  the  facts  only  as  some  interpretation  of  them 
obtains  justification  by  satisfactorily  clearing  them  up.  The  interpre¬ 
tation  provides  the  facts  quite  as  truly  as  the  facts  suggest  the  inter¬ 
pretation;  because  the  facts  for  us  are  always  the  facts  as  we  interpret 
them,  and  our  interpretation  is  always  the  best  statement  we  can  offer, 
under  the  circumstances,  of  what  the  facts  really  are.  So,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  proof  of  a  hypothesis  is  not  the  external  and  accidental  bring¬ 
ing  of  it  to  the  test  of  facts  which  are  alien  to  its  nature  and  which  would 
remain  untouched  by  its  own  fate.  Mill  employs  no  little  ingenuity  in 
explaining  why  a  legitimate  hypothesis  must  be  capable  of  proof  by 
“independent  evidence.”  Is  it  not  simply  that  if  the  hypothesis  has 
done  its  work  the  facts  to  which  it  brings  us  must  be  different  from  the 
“facts”  from  which  it  set  out,  else  these  would  never  have  needed  the 
reinterpretation  ? 

Mill  distinguishes  hypotheses  which  can  be  proved  from  those  which 
can  only  be  disproved.  “We  want  to  be  assured  that  the  law  we  have 
hypothetically  assumed  is  a  true  one;  and  its  leading  deductively  to  true 
results  will  afford  this  assurance,  provided  the  case  be  such  that  a  false 
law  cannot  lead  to  a  true  result;  provided  no  law,  except  the  very  one 
which  we  have  assumed,  can  lead  deductively  to  the  same  conclusions 
which  that  leads  to.  And  this  proviso  is  often  realized.”^  But  it  is 
realized  only  inside  of  a  larger  system  which  for  the  purpose  of  the 
inquiry  need  not  be  questioned,  but  is  of  the  same  essential  character 
as  that  of  the  interpretation  within  the  system.  Alternatives  which  at 
one  stage  of  an  investigation  or  one  period  of  human  knowledge  seem  to 

^  Sidgwick,  The  Process  of  Argument,  12-21,  makes  an  acute  analysis  of  the  relation 
of  fact  and  inference,  and  shows  it  to  be  one  of  degree. 

2  35od. 


INFERENCE  AS  DISCOVERY 


47 


be  absolute  mutual  exclusives,  cease  later  to  be  such  through  a  revision 
of  the  system  within  which  they  fall.  In  contrast  to  the  hypothesis  that 
can  be  definitely  proved,  Mill  considers  such  hypotheses  as  that  of 
Descartes’  celestial  vortices,  which  “could  not  lead  to  any  course  of 
investigation  capable  of  converting  it  from  an  hypothesis  into  a  proved 

fact.  It  might  chance  to  be  dwproved . Direct  evidence  of  its 

truth  there  could  not  be.”^  In  principle,  however,  there  is  no  difference; 
all  proof  is  disproof.  There  is  every  difference  in  the  degree  to  which 
the  disproof  of  one  interpretation  is  felt  to  be  a  satisfactory  proof  of 
another,  but  there  is  never  another  kind  of  proof  than  that.  The  move¬ 
ment  of  inference  is  positive,  not  negative;  and  any  bona  fide  interpre¬ 
tation  of  the  facts  has  a  right  to  hold  the  field  till  it  meets  with  obstacles 
and  is  challenged  by  a  better. 

There  seems  to  be  no  escape  for  Mill  from  an  ex  post  facto  view  of 
“facts.”  After  an  inference  has  done  its  work  we  can  then  look  back 
upon  the  facts  as  the  inference  has  now  interpreted  them,  and  our 
rejected  or  outworn  hypotheses  we  set  up  in  contrast  to  the  facts  and 
call  them  errors.  This  ex  post  facto  attitude  is  the  temptation  always 
waiting  in  the  path  of  the  realist,  as  Mill  must  be  classed  in  this  part  of 
his  theory.  The  very  word  “fact”  plays  into  his  hands.^  For  common 
purposes  we  very  properly  confine  attention  to  the  results  of  our  infer¬ 
ences,  and  forget  the  process  of  the  inference,  as  we  might  kick  out  a 
ladder  when  we  have  climbed  to  our  goal.  We  then  speak  of  the  facts 
at  an  earlier  stage  as  we  now  at  a  later  stage  know  them  to  have  been, 
which  is  legitimate  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  later  stage,  but  illegiti¬ 
mate  if  we  shift  the  point  of  view  to  a  consideration  of  the  inference  as  it 
took  place  at  the  earlier  stage.  Mill  exemplifies  this  shift  when,  in  con¬ 
nection  with  the  passage  just  quoted,  he  says  of  the  vortices  of  Descartes, 
that  “  the  hypothesis  would  have  been  false,  though  no  such  direct  evi¬ 
dence  of  its  falsity  had  been  procurable. Here  the  shift  of  standpoint 
is  surely  obvious.  But  precisely  the  same  shift,  though  in  more  subtle 
guise,  is  involved  in  the  assumption  that  definite,  accepted  facts  are  at 
hand  both  to  prompt  and  to  test  hypotheses.^ 

"  3S5<^- 

2  “It  is  impossible  to  bring  one’s  beliefs  into  harmony  with  facts,  except  so  far  as 
the  facts  are  known  to  us”  (Joseph,  Introduction  to  Logic,  344). 

3  355«- 

4  Mill  commits  the  same  fallacy  when  he  seriously  maintains  that  if  one  asserts 
a  general  proposition  he  has  thereby  actually  asserted  every  case,  including  those 
then  unknown,  that  may  ever  come  under  it  (141a  and  note).  This  is  to  occupy  an 
assumed  point  of  view,  not  merely  of  the  “innocent  bystander,”  but  of  an  absolute 
bystander. 


48  RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


This  would  seem  to  afford  an  explanation  also  of  Mill’s  repeated  con¬ 
troversy  with  Whewell  regarding  the  difference  between  colligation  of 
facts  and  induction.  It  is  an  ex  post  facto  distinction.  An  induction, 
Mill  holds,  must  be  either  true  or  false,  while  a  mere  colligation  need  not 
be  either.^  But  many  an  alleged  induction  has  proved  later  to  have 
been  a  colligation  in  Mill’s  sense.  Mill  admits  that  the  colligation  is 
“not  the  sum  of  the  observations  merely”  but  is  “  the  sum  of  the  observa¬ 
tions  seen  under  a  new  point  of  view”;  but  claims  that  “a  real  induction 
is  ...  .  the  sum  of  more  than  the  observations.”^  But  this  is  to  forget 
that  a  new  point  of  view  is  more,  in  the  sense  of  a  reconstruction,  a  better 
grasp  of  the  facts,  and  that  a  real  induction  adds  a  general  law  to  the 
facts  only  in  the  sense  of  knowing  them  better.  The  general  law  has  no 
existence  whatever  outside  the  facts,  if  we  remember  that  the  only  facts 
we  can  speak  of  are  the  facts  as  we  take  them.  But  as  we  look  back 
upon  our  inferences  we  distinguish  the  constructions  made  from  a  dis¬ 
carded  “point  of  view”  and  those  which  still  hold  good;  the  one  we  then 
may  very  well  consider  a  colligation  of  the  facts  under  a  descriptive  con¬ 
ception,  the  other  we  consider  the  addition  of  real  law. 

It  is  possible  in  the  same  way  to  explain  Mill’s  contention  regarding 
the  origin  of  our  “conceptions,”  which  is  simply  the  question  of  whence 
our  hypotheses  arise.  Mill,  in  defense  of  empiricism,  set  out  boldly  with 
the  assertion  that  “the  conceptions  ....  which  we  employ  for  the 
colligation  and  methodization  of  facts,  do  not  develop  themselves  from 
within,  but  are  impressed  upon  the  mind  from  without,”  and  that  they 
are  usually  obtained  by  comparison  and  abstraction  “from  the  very 
phenomena  which  it  is  their  office  to  colligate.”^  Mill  is  quite  right  here 
as  against  the  extreme  a  priori  position  of  Whewell.  But  the  concep¬ 
tion  we  use  is  after  all  a  function  of  our  previous  experience  and  of  the 
whole  situation,  the  hypothesis  being  tentatively  taken  and  the  situation 
gradually  cleared  up.  Mill  goes  on,  in  very  different  terms  from  those 
just  quoted,  to  describe  the  process  by  which  “we  advance  from  a  less 
to  a  more  appropriate  general  conception,  in  the  progress  of  our  investi¬ 
gations  the  process  in  which  the  conception  is  alternately  “furnished 
to  the  mind”  and  “furnished  by  the  mind.”  “In  endeavoring  to  arrange 
the  facts,  at  whatever  point  we  begin,  we  never  advance  three  steps  with¬ 
out  forming  a  general  conception,  more  or  less  distinct  and  precise;  and 
.  .  .  .  this  general  conception  becomes  the  clue  which  we  instantly 
endeavor  to  trace  through  the  rest  of  the  facts.”  “If  we  are  not  satis¬ 
fied  with  the  agreements  which  we  discover  among  the  phenomena”  by 

^218-19.  22id.  ^457^.  '’463c. 


INFERENCE  AS  DISCOVERY 


49 


using  this  conception,  ‘^we  change  our  path,  and  look  out  for  other 
agreements.”  ‘‘The  different  conceptions  which  the  mind  successively 
tries,  it  either  already  possessed  from  its  previous  experience,  or  they 
were  supplied  to  it  in  the  first  stage  of  the  corresponding  act  of  compari¬ 
son.”"  This  tentative  process  can  be  defined  only  in  terms  of  the 
mutually  constitutive  relation  of  hypotheses  and  facts. 

Still  less  can  Mill  maintain  that  the  contribution  between  hypothesis 
and  fact  is  all  in  one  direction  when  he  explains  what  is  meant  by  “appro¬ 
priate”  conceptions.  “The  question  of  appropriateness  is  relative  to 
the  particular  object  we  have  in  view.”^  “  Some  modes  of  classing  things 
are  more  valuable  than  others  for  human  uses,  whether  of  speculation  or 
of  practise;  and  our  classifications  are  not  well  made,  unless  the  things 
which  they  bring  together  ....  agree  with  each  other  and  differ  from 
other  things  in  the  very  circumstances  which  are  of  primary  importance 
for  the  purpose  ....  which  we  have  in  view,  and  which  constitutes 
the  problem  before  us.”  Our  conceptions  must  “help  us  toward  what 
we  wish  to  understand.”^  But,  now,  what  is  the  criterion  of  such  appro¬ 
priateness?  The  answer  is  suggested  by  Mill,  though  he  by  no  means 
appreciates  its  full  significance.  “  That  the  conception  we  have  obtained 
is  the  one  we  want,  can  only  be  known  when  we  have  done  the  work  for 
the  sake  of  which  we  wanted  it;  when  we  completely  understand  .  .  .  . 
the  phenomena  ....  with  which  we  concern  ourselves.”  But  “pre¬ 
mature  conceptions  we  must  be  continually  making  up,  in  our  progress 
to  something  better.  They  are  an  impediment  to  the  progress  of  knowl¬ 
edge,  only  when  permanently  acquiesced  in. ”4  The  “work  to  be  done” 
by  the  hypothesis  is  to  give  us  the  very  facts  which  we  can  then,  if  there 
is  occasion  so  to  do,  assume  to  have  been  present  before  the  hypothesis 
was  suggested.  We  are  entirely  justified  in  reading  them  back  in  this 
way  from  the  later  point  of  view  after  we  have  reached  it,  and  so  long 
as  we  maintain  it;  but  we -could  not  have  held  this  point  of  view,  or 
grasped  the  facts  which  we  thus  read  back,  if  the  hypothesis  had  not 
done  its  work. 

The  cardinal  error,  then,  of  Mill’s  theory  of  inference  is  to  read  back 
the  results  of  inference  so  as  to  make  it  seem  to  operate  upon  completely 
determined  fact.  The  facts  on  which  inference  is  supposed  to  be  based, 
and  to  which  it  is  expected  to  apply,  whether  these  are  regarded  as  the 
ultimate  mental  constituents  of  associational  psychology  or  the  things 
and  events  of  objective  naturalism,  are  by  Mill  all  equally  taken  to  be 
the  sort  of  definitely  determined  realities  such  as  they  can  be  known  to 

*  4596.  "  459^.  3  462e-63a.  ^  463^- 


50 


RELATION  OF  INFERENCE  TO  FACT  IN  MILL’S  LOGIC 


be  only  after  inference  has  in  any  case  done  its  work.  Facts  when  thus 
determined  are  found  to  possess  attributes  whose  universal  and  system¬ 
atic  character  betrays  their  origin  in  the  reflectively  interpretative  con¬ 
structions  of  experience.  In  passing  from  one  fact  of  this  kind  to  another 
there  is  no  place  found  for  a  living  act  of  inference,  because  the  work 
which  inference  should  do  has  already  been  assumed,  and  inference  col¬ 
lapses  into  a  formal  relation  within  simultaneously  presented  contents. 
While  a  subsidiary  place  must  finally  be  left  open  for  invention  and  dis¬ 
covery,  these  are  not  assigned  by  Mill  any  constitutive  function  in  the 
determining  of  the  facts  which  were  given  in  the  first  place.  Fact  and 
inference  therefore  fall  apart,  and  in  trying  to  find  a  vital  relation  between 
them  Mill  oscillates  from  one  to  the  other.  His  difficulties  could  be 
removed  only  by  recognizing  the  ultimate  unity  of  inference  and  fact, 
and  developing  their  distinction  only  as  an  instrumental  function  in  the 
process  of  knowledge. 


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GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U.S.A. 

